The Winds of Italia
by Yoshimoto Trigen
Summary: Two brothers become more than just brothers in a land run by fear, corruption, and an impossible system that leaves the world near the breaking-point of insanity. The two Italians seek their new unity, lest their new bonds with each other be broken again
1. Chapter 1

For all he was worth, Lovino Vargas had never been a person of a calm personality. He was always bursting with harsh attitude and a drive to always be in control of the situation at hand. Despite this personality, he has always been met with awkward situations that have left him both set a-flamed with anger on the inside of his heart, and increasingly flabbergasted at his poor luck to be such a person. Sometimes, he wished he would be left alone by his adoptive father Antonio Vargas. Other times, he has been either afraid or murderously spiteful of his neighbors in this town of Europa. He is frightened by his nearby neighbor and local voyeur Francis Bonnefoy, whom always made subtle passes at every other male and female within the block-radius of his house and job. Lovino has been known to have absolutely no liking for Ludwig, the all-wise but still relatively young man up north of the town near the streets that lead to the Scandinavian Cul-de-Sac. Ludwig is a good friend of Feliciano, them having met at the University of Axis Powers and eventually growing to be the best of friends. Lovino had grown up separated from Feliciano, himself being under the care of Antonio before he was old enough to be reunited with his brother. The moment when they had met for the first time, two long lost brothers whom had only the foggiest notions of each other yet all the ties in the world in appearance, Feliciano was brought to their reunion by Ludwig himself. Lovino had absolutely no idea who this tall, dour German was, but he knew from the moment that his eyes laid upon him that he was absolutely _despicable._ The man was strict, inward and practically ignored Feliciano despite having the position of being near him for so long. If Lovino had even the slightest chance to meet his brother for one moment, even if his darkest frets of his brother being a self-concerned, egotistical jerk were true, he would have been elated beyond compare. It was strange to him, really: he had never met Feliciano, and what he heard he could never have relied on by heart, but deep down he felt such a strange curiosity and loneliness that stemmed from him wishing he could have someone closer than a step-father or step-brothers and sisters from Antonio's family. However, Ludwig seemed to give little heed to Feliciano, whom was nothing but a passing phase, a singular event of sound and fury that signified nothing but a momentary annoyance. This drives Lovino, to this day, towards the brink of homicide of the first degree only to be held back by his brother whom wanted to keep the peace between him and Ludwig. Feliciano claimed that deep down his German friend really did care for not only Feliciano, but for Lovino as well. That did little to quell the Southern Italian fury, though.

It was always plain as day to Lovino that he scared Feliciano very easily with this temper, to the point that on some days where he goes so over the edge in his ravings and scares his brother that he decides that it would be best for him to sort of disappear entirely from their house on the Mediterranean Lane for a few days and go somewhere else in the town. It hurt him more on the inside as he continued to realize his own temper problem was hurting his brother more than it was protecting him, which was the entire point of him getting angry at all. One day he became so enraged from a passing comment by Roderich Edelstein, the Austrian owner of the entirety of the Adriatic Beach Front, on the local news-channel that involved a sharp criticism of the Italians' way of fighting or something along those lines that Lovino stormed out in a furious rage. He was walking down the Alpine Parkway to get back home. There, he saw what he knew was quite possibly the answer to his problem with remaining united with Feliciano: a bunk-bed. A pristine hard-wood bunk-bed carved by the strong hands of some unknown Swiss in the Alpines. The very design of it caught his eye, since it dawned upon him, as he stood in the snow-walkway that led into the store on the ridge that he and his brother had never slept like real brothers in this day and age. From what he had read from occasional story books, twin brothers were almost required by some mystical embodiment of the universe to sleep on these sort of things to bond together. It made absolutely no sense to Lovino, but if it had any shot of bringing him and his brother closer together instead of apart like before, then it was worth a shot! He quickly ran home with the idea with absolutely no memory of his anger, wanting to find his brother as soon as he could.

* * *

He was in luck; Feliciano was just waking up from a siesta he started, ironically, just before Lovino sat down to watch the local news program that just happened to showcase Roderich. He could remember practically yelling his first "What" at the top of his voice, but he did not see Feliciano even move under his bed's sheet on his side of the bed-room. Apparently, siesta's cause Feliciano to be a heavy-sleeper, because he looked as right as rain with a great big smile when Lovino hurried through the front door. Feliciano looked up with that beaming, glowing smile as he continued to re-button his blue uniform and called in greeting, "Ciao, fratello!"

Lovino had to keep himself from tripping over himself when he spoke; his joyous emotions flowing like a tremendous river. "Feliciano, I've found a way that we can be closer as brothers! The idea just came to me as I was walking down the road, but now I know that it can make us a real family!" He stuttered in between sentences, but only because he was checking himself to find the right words for this exemplary discovery.

His brother seemed confused at first, his face gaining a small tinge of both bewilderment and childish surprise. How he does that, Lovino would never be able to figure out. "We're not a real family?" His lip almost seemed to quiver like an upset child's, but his voice remained the same level of confused as before. "But… we're fratelli?"

_Oh…I have to make sense when I speak._ Lovino just remembered, calming himself down to coherently bring his idea to bear. "Do you remember back when we first met, and you wanted me to read you a fairy-tale about three brothers who wanted to stay together forever?" Feliciano regained his smile with an excited vengeance, nodding his head repeatedly before beginning to talk about how he had Ludwig force Lovino initially to read it to him. He was cut off, however, by Lovino trying to continue his train of thought. "Well, the reason you wanted me to read that story to you was because you wanted to make up for the time we did not have as kids, right? If so, I have the perfect idea to help us make up all that lost time: bunk-beds!"

A new face of curiosity overcame Feliciano. He was not upset like before, rather, he seemed eloquently like a new child whom discovered something fun and knew it in his heart that it would be a grand new thing to play with. The face he was making was the literal de facto starting line for that exact child's initial curiosity: filled with intrigue, joy and puzzling. He asked politely, "Do you think we can try the bed out tonight if we go buy it now?" Receiving a positive answer from his brother, Feliciano burst with joy and held his hands together in giddy. "How great! We get to act like kids tonight! This will be so much fun, Lovino!"

The smiles and complexly simple emotions that had raced across Feliciano's face made Lovino all the more happy that he was doing this. Every smile given from him was like a pang of unending warmth within Lovino's heart which he, quite frankly, could not place the reason for why he felt like this. He wanted to hug Feliciano close to him and never let go, no matter how close that their bodies would get. _Is this what it feels like to have a brother…?_ He paid little attention to the thought in his mind, instead going forward with the plans. Lovino drove both of them from their home to the furniture store and met face-to-face with the frightening yet pressingly neutral Basch Zwingli. He looked very assured of his financial well-being since he did not even flinch or blink when the two Italians made their entrance. Lovino and Basch looked each other down from the first time their eyes met, both knowing that the other wanted to assert their dominance in the room. This duel of the leers went onward even as Feliciano came up with his portion of the money from his pizza-shaped wallet. Of course, he was none-the-wiser of their competing man-hoods and was instead trying to make casual small talk that was doomed to inevitably fail. The money changed hands and Switzerland helped load up the pieces of the bed onto their stereotypical Italian tomato-red sports' car. To make sure that the bed got back home safe and sound, Lovino insisted that he was the one to drive rather than Feliciano. Kiku Honda had told him of his brother's driving skills the first day they met; he says to this day the mental scars nor the fear of Italians' behind the wheel of motor vehicles have not faded. Feliciano easily capitulated and allowed his brother to drive them home.

* * *

Both of them brought the pieces of Swiss-crafted wood with stalwart hinges into their humble abode, but Lovino once again insisted on putting the bed together with Feliciano merely watching over and handing him tools. This wasn't to say that Lovino did not trust his brother; he merely thought that he was better suited to the tasks of complex workmanship like putting together a bunk-bed. There was some sort of domineering drive within him, practically pleading with his body to work his hardest in front of his brother now. He complied with his earnest, mild ecstasy and went to work while Feliciano watched from his little seat against the wall. The Northern Italian rocked joyfully in his non-existent chair with his brown eyes looking over the progress. He handed each tool with a clumsiness that was punctuated by his ditzy attitude to the world around him. Each time Lovino asked for a tool, Feliciano nearly had a fit of confusion when he broke out of his easy trance, but he always reorganized himself to aid his brother consistently. Lovino felt empowered by his brothers' commitment, although how small the care-free Italian was paying attention was up for debate, he worked harder when Feliciano was watching him. He rolled up the sleeves of his jacket to show off his muscles while he was picking up the wooden-panels to hinge the beds together piece by piece. _Why am I acting so desperate to get his attention?_ He wondered in a small point of absent-mindedness. Part of him was embarrassed that he was acting so chauvinistically towards his brother; this was the type of stuff that Antonio did in front of women to belittle other men! The blush was a real indication of his hurried conviction of fault in character, so he tried to hide his indecisiveness from his brother. Thankfully, Feliciano was about as present as the past at the moment, so Lovino was safe in hiding his sore pride. His heart, on the other hand, would not stop beating so fast every time he looked back to the Italian ditz, whom was now playing with his ahoge like a cat would with a springy-stringed toy.

* * *

The bunk bed was ready by their bed-time. They ate their dinner, made almost entirely of pasta and Italian culinary confections with vegetables and tomatoes, and soon hurried off to bed with the giddiness of a child on Christmas Eve. However, Lovino manufactured a problem to this situation, as he always did when he tried to examine a situation from afar. "Who do you want to be on top, Feliciano? I could be on the bottom if you would like."

Blinking in thought, Feliciano smiled and replied, "I want you to be on the top, fratello! It suits your personality!"

The blush began to creep its return, so Lovino gave an affirmative response and hurried up the stairs to claim his perch on the bunk-bed and slink into the red covers. "Good night, Feliciano." And Feliciano returned the beckon in suit.

The silence of the night soon swam into their minds like pasta, tomatoes and the joys of future siestas. Above and below, the Italian twins were finally acting like brothers in their minds; something they had never done due to their separation as children. The silence was their sacred solace of affirmation in their personal bonds: they were united in their sleep, albeit separated by air and wood. Soon, however, a small coo by the bottom-bunked brother gave a sort of start to the events that would lead a cultural revolution amongst the European citizenry of the town of Europa. Feliciano was barely conscious, but he meant it all the same. "I like it when you're on top, Lovino."

The elder brother was barely awake at the time as well, but his ear still caught the whisper in the yawn. His mind barely even comprehended it, but the words soon combined and the true meaning of the whisper made the mechanics in Lovino's mind turn. The blush suddenly reappeared in full color of tomato, and consciousness swarmed in for him and his eyes blinked as he whispered to himself, almost in reply to the coo in disbelief and shock, "What?"


	2. Chapter 2

Lovino was the first to wake up in the morning. He carefully climbed down in his birthday suit from the top-bunk, noticing that his brother's hand was rested upon the pillow from under the blanket to in front of his face. If he could have sworn on it, Lovino would have said that Feliciano looked exactly like a sleeping baby. So innocent with the sun shining upon his hair, his skin being practically illuminated like delicate glass or perfected marble. To say the least, it took all of Lovino's mental capabilities to suppress the memory of the coo from the night before. The small, adorable…

No, don't think about anything! Get dressed, then walk out of here and clear your head. He did not hesitate a moment more. Lovino practically tripped over the entire house trying to rush out. His destination was to the Alpine Park, to the farthest reaches of the Scandinavian Cul-De-Sac, to the back of Ivan's property that extended all the way to a mountain range which made it one of the largest properties in the entirety of the area around Europa. He just needed to get away. The wind blew the leaves on the ground like a fleet of faeries dancing with the gusts through the forest. One gust brought an entire horde of them against Lovino's feet, but he didn't seem to notice despite his gaze being glued to the cobblestoned path. He followed the path by ground-sight alone, and soon he found himself to one of the places he had listed off randomly in his head in his rush: the Alpine Park. This forest and park were fine specimens of the local Swissman's works for the town of Europa as a whole. He kept the park under his patronage and supervision, even going so far as to use wood grown from here. The place was kept intact and beautified almost constantly at the whims of Mr. Zwingli. The man did his foresting work with a sense of pride that rivaled that of Ivan with his alcohol business and Francis and his pornographic entails. He rivaled them on pride, and his job was practically a fifth of theirs in the level of vice!

There, sitting on the bench, was one person he did not expect- nor want- to run into at the moment: Ludwig. The Dreaded and Despised German Potato Bastard, Lovino had once formally bequeathed to his naming. No one else partook in the ceremony, but the title stood the test of time on the South Italian's account. But the tension seemed to work for Lovino, as he had no thoughts as to what he was trying to forget. He even had the inner strength to courage out "Well, hello there, Ludwig." The amount of despise in that sentence made himself proud, knowing that there would be no coming back from that ultimate Italian word-smithage. He donned a complimentary, victorious sneer.

Seeming to be barely interested, Ludwig raised an eyebrow from the news-paper and acknowledged his existence at last. "Hello, Lovino. How're you today?" He spoke with a monotonous demeanor, giving off the feeling of pinnacle relaxation.

Lovino stumbled back where he stood, taken a-back by that taxing retort given by Ludwig. _That clever bastard! I should've guessed he would be able to reflect a scathing attack of that magnitude!_ Shaking his head to regain his mental balance given by this roundabout distraction, he continued the pleasantries. "What are you doing here in the park?"

The Northern German gave a polite shrug, his eyes raised from the large but now lowered newspaper. "I guess I am here to read this." Ludwig's eyes squinted slightly after a brief moment of silence, seeming to look through Lovino. "If I may ask, is there some sort of problem with you?"

This really surprised Lovino, _Does he have to bring that up? How did he know?_ The look upon his face gave it away, as well as the cold sweat that broke out like a busted dam. He shook his head and looked away with embarrassment, "No, nothing at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me." A pale blush formed upon his face as his memory came back. The emotions brewing within him steamed like a cauldron of mixings, which included a dash of confusion, a stapling of apprehension, and a pinch of another unknown ingredient. The very being of this variable was unnamable by Lovino, but he was sure that it was an integral part of his mind. It nudged him and nudged the back of his mind, and it threatened to drive him bawling in insanity where he stood in front of the Accursed Potato.

"Your face is like a painting from one of your walls, Italian; you cannot hide what troubles you even if it was the one thing you desired the most in the entire world." Ludwig looked back to his newspaper to let that line sink in. "Perhaps you should be with Antonio, rather than here with me?" The advice was prompt and substantial, and all Ludwig could hear was a gathered breathing of a young man and the retreating steps that picked up their pace as they grew farther. Soon, those taps of leather were gone with the wind altogether.

* * *

Antonio woke up as content as ever. He never let anything break his Spanish stride, no matter what it was. He was the peak of dominance, no matter how strenuous the circumstances. This was the truth, and so help anyone who tried to disprove it! Giving his gold-plated, un-gemmed crown a small stroke, he gave a bitter-sweet smile to the memories that it contained for him. The lion and turret proudly adorned by it reminded him of where he came from, and how great he once was. Once…

A polite knock on the front door gave him a start. He wasn't expecting anyone today, much less any sort of deliveries. A nicely-made silken robe with red, orange and white colours all around was at his beckon, and so he did put it on and open the front door as he called for them to steady their hand at the constant knocking. Antonio was overjoyed to find his adorable, fully-grown adopted son standing there. He seemed chilled by the autumn air around them, but still a-glow by the sun that stayed its course in the sky like the seagulls that maintained their watch in this perimeter from the sea. "Oh, Lovino!" He practically squealed in delight, "Come in, come in! You should have told me you would be coming over!" Antonio placed a single hand upon the Italian boy's shoulder, and just by that single touch he was shocked to find the returning touch of knots in stressful agony that featured neither qualm nor feature upon Lovino's face. _What is this burden he carries? When did this happen?_ The Spaniard had to stay his own hand from practically shoving his son inside and placing him- by force if need be- down at the kitchen table.

The two sat as Antonio had wanted them to, but all that had happened was some awkward shuffling by Lovino as he tried to start from the beginning of his dilemma. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, Lovino spoke. "Something strange happened to me. I heard someone talk about me in a way I wouldn't expect them to. It was like a crash in the night, but still…" The confusion in his voice caused him to stammer and practically choke. "But still, I feel that the words they spoke gave my heart some sort of pain." He looked up, "But it wasn't a bad sort of pain. It felt good." He hesitated before continuing the last third of his confession, his eyes seeming to almost glitter.

However, Antonio knew exactly what this sort of feeling was. He was self-renowned as the master of it, as well as being its courtier. Oh, how wondrous a moment this is! His lips grew a smile as wide as the heavens and he comforted Lovino. "I know what you're feeling seems strange to you, especially since you're now a grown man and should have probably have felt this emotion long ago. There's no helping this, nor is there any way to stop it or cut it off." He leaned forward for emphasis and lowered his voice for his obvious desire for dramatic-effect. "You're in love."

Lovino's face became as blank as a faceless façade, nearly engulfed in shocked neutrality. "I'm in love?" he stammered. "That can't be possible. I've only met this person for a little while now, but even then-!"

Antonio gave a shrug of his head. "Love is possible even with the closest but briefest of moments with another. From the way I can see it, you're far more than simply _in_ love, you've fallen head-over-heels for it and you're just confused about how to handle it!" Lovino did not respond, almost like he was waiting for a universal answer still to a terrible problem. So, he continued on with a question, "Who is the lucky woman who has caught the eyes and ears of my little 'henchman'?"

There was no silence, but a slight stammer from the Italian who looked down at the table with his hands resting there like as if he were reading an illegible text. The entire table was a tablet of ancient words, sculpted down plainly clear as day in front of Lovino, and he deciphered the language with attempts at wording a distant feeling. He finally was able to coherently string these together into a sentence, "What do you think I should do to find out if these feelings are true?" His hands were of no concern at this point; they danced like rattlesnakes here and there to the point that it is simply pabulum to try and follow them with the written word. His emotions shake them along, and his muscles obey to their best effort.

Giving this a deep thought, Antonio then formulated a reply, "What you need to do is to try and 'woo' her. Make her know through little hints here and there about your love, and then the _fiesta_ may truly begin." He slid him a sly, yet gentlemanly wink that was small gift to him. Making it apparent, he leaned his head forward again and muttered, "No woman can resist the power of a Spanish matador. I doubt they will have any more success against a solitary, fluent bad-boy like you, especially if you try your best to charm them."

A sudden laugh broke any silence that was to be the understanding of that advice. It was a repetitive "Hon"-sound that was dripping with French accenting. There, upon the window-sill stayed Francis Bonnefoy with the most exuberant of smile and laughs. Lovino looked at the perverted fellow with disgust, as if his very essence in this house was warrant enough to burn it down to the ground. To him, the Frenchman was not welcome to reality at all. A dirty scoundrel and a womanizing-manizing cod-piece that was more a-keen in birth-date to a zodiac of flowers and pansies, much less any from the East like a tiger or dog. The quasi-laughing subsided after a moment in riding the waves of shock and surprise of the two inhabitants, but the sing-song livelihood never died away. It was immovable as the stars. "What is this I hear? Little Lovi is in love?" He let out an enthusiastic cheer. "How wonderful, how _wonderful _this is! To think that one day my neighbor's son could become a willing connoisseur of love at such an early age? Impossible, _oui_? _Non_? Oh, it is of no matter!" Francis leapt deftly into the house through the opened window, landing right _on top_ of Antonio's table. He got on his knees for Lovino with a rose in-hand from the depth of oblivion and whispered seductively, "Who has stolen my fair neighbor's heart?"

"Get off the table. _Now_." Lovino growled. _It's bad enough having you here, but now I have to smell your shitty perfume?_

The Frenchman gave a small wink and let himself smell the rose. "Who is the woman who has taken this strong heart of yours, Lovino? Please, whisper her name to your big-brother so I may grow a thousand flowers in light of this surely to be marriage of beauties!" His facial hair seemed to sparkle when he said 'marriage', along with the rest of his body. However, the hair seemed to be a sort of focal point for it. The epicenter of camp, if you will.

The urge to deck him in the jaw was overwhelming, especially since he was _still on the table_ but did not seem to care. He snapped at him, "It's none of your business, French bastard, now _get off the fucking table_!" He realized he was standing up from his seat, and after a moment of breathing away the response he had to the voyeur, the decision was made inside the mind to reject him as deserving of any response at all and promptly sat back down, albeit his head cocked lower to show he was still fanged. He muttered, "And neither you or the Boss knows if it really is that." His speech slowed as it reached the length of the sentence, trying to calculate if ever so slightly down to the last meaning.

The sparkle came again, that _fucking_ sparkle. A detested sign of perversion that extended from Francis as his right-as-rain attitude soon devolved to an expression of inquisitiveness. The twinkle completed in his 'Parisian' eye, his left eye that he stated was an eye for beauty in both art and outer-beauty of human beings, and was looking straight through Lovino. "Perhaps… it is not a woman that has your eye, my little brother?" Seeming to continue is ignorance of the Southern Italian's anger in his short response, Francis handed off the completion of his thoughts as a viable retort. "Maybe you have fallen deep not for a graceful member of women, but a submissive knight in shining armor?" The silence was from pent-in and stalled outrage, but that had not quelled his taste for romantic-theatrics. "A man."

If he could rip through wood, he would've done so to trip the Frenchman from his bearings. If Lovino could reach out with his hand and take the girly-man by the throat, he would do it in an instant without hesitation for Antonio's approval. Despite his young appearance, the Italian was a grown man now and only relied on approval from his father for respective basis. But he knew better than to simply throttle the perverted obstruction where he stood; the older man may have been a charlatan, but he was still able to over-power him with minimal effort thanks to his muscular fortitude from earlier days. All he could do was leap up with a face reddened with blush of embarrassment, indignation, and every other word known to all languages to display his rage. But even then, the language barriers could not stave his yell of challenge to Francis that nearly stained the man's purple overcoat, "What the fuck did you just say?" He pointed a defiant hand that would've exploded its indicating finger like a prankster-toffee or a Beretta filled with way too much gunpowder. _**BANG!**_ His temper was off like a speeding bullet, tearing holes through Francis at high-speeds. "I dare you, say that again, so I can _hear_ it!"

The outburst was a peculiar blip on the radar for the Frenchman. He repeated his claim, and added, "It's no shame to be like that, Lovino. After all, you live amongst a beautiful town of women and men, it'd be a shame if you did not partake in the allure and romance one way or another. Not to mention a waste, since your father spent so much time raising you up just like him."

That's where Antonio intervened. This was becoming too much ruckus for him to stand this early in the morning, but he had to keep his smile for the sake of calming them down. "Everyone should just calm down before they go _loco_. Can we all just agree to let Lovino decide what to do? It's his decision, and his decision only to make. I will not interfere, and neither will Francis." He held up his hand to cut off the upset protests by the Italian, continuing on to say, "Instead, if he _really_ needs my help, he will come back here and tell me how I can help. He knows he can trust me, right?" He offered that question-statement to both Lovino and Francis, whom both complied with awkward regret fused with apprehension by Lovino and disappointment in the loss of the present-fun within Francis. "Good. Now, if you'll be excusing me, I'll be having my breakfast now."

The older Italian brother left with an emotionally-gutted 'thanks', walking out of the front-door with his head held down in deep thought. There was a buzz of silent-noise as Antonio pulled his hands through the locks upon his head, the smoothing of hair mixing with the content level of his house's buzz. Something popped into his mind and he looked up in mild confusion, and turned to the obviously-still-there Francis. "What did you mean by me 'raising you up to be just like' myself?"

The Frenchman blinked, probably thinking _Oh. I thought you forgot that quip by now_, and gave a basic but still incredibly hammy sigh and shrug of surrender. "I believe I know you far more than you know yourself, my old friend. One day you'll see what I meant by that, and then your beauty will be mine to behold." Not giving the chance for his Spanish compatriot to completely absorb this small word, Francis leapt with the skill and grace of a gazelle to escape to his flowerful château. Antonio looked after him, half to wonder what in the name of everything the quizzical man was talking about, and half to make sure that he did not venture at Lovino one more time to get another rise out of him. The rising sun basked against the two as they walked off, making each other seem like diverging points of destiny infinity.


	3. Chapter 3

With a small click, the front door to their home had closed behind Lovino. He was lost once more in a trance, the fifteenth that morning alone as he sat down at last on the kitchen chair. Feliciano was not yet awake as far as he could see, probably still a-slumber within the bottom-bunk that seemed to be the catalyst for these bizarre emotions that plagued the Southern Italian so. The words Francis had given him in Antonio's house still rung fresh within his mind despite his efforts on the pilgrimage back to distract himself. They were not only strange, they felt like they were compatible with Antonio's advice of flirtation. He wasn't about to admit this out-right, but perhaps, maybe, Francis was-

"Buon giorno, mi fratello" came whispering into Lovino's ear as a pair of bare-arms circled around his neck in a lazy-fashion. The suddenness of the sleepy embrace caught him off-guard and made him nearly leap out of the seat in shock. The sleepier of the two, Feliciano, managed to hold on and keep on hugging Lovino even to the point of ignoring the frightened yelp. The grip tightened with joy and the voice spoke again. "Your idea was brilliant, Lovino; I've never slept better than last night."

His brother may not have felt it, but Lovino's pulse was racing in anticipation. For some reason, his mind kept repeating the same plea: _Please don't let him be naked._ The repetition was needed for the point to get across, since by nature the Italian brothers slept in the nude, and both Ludwig and Kiku told him in passing about how Feliciano once ran out of his house, stark-naked, when he was overwhelmingly-upset over something Arthur Kirkland had said about the group's friendship. Who knew what the absent-minded brother would do in a kitchen after a good night's sleep?

Lovino looked behind himself and, thanking all he had, Feliciano had draped himself in his blanket like a sort of dress that managed to cover his theoretical vital-regions. His muscled body was still visible, as well as his shy-boy personal way of standing still which gave no help to his visage as a practical Roman-sculpted god. The tension in the room was going to come to a boiling point, and it wasn't the same type of tension between Francis and Lovino, a cat-and-mouse sort of hate. It was on the other side of the spectrum entirely, which planted these accursed nude thoughts within his mind. _Have to at least try_ was the summarization he came up with before for Francis' advice. It was a weird and practically taboo idea to formulate: Antonio described these feelings meant for women, yet Francis gave him the impression that they could be for men as well, but perhaps the Frenchman would have spoken differently if he had a clue it was Feliciano? This sudden acceptance of this taboo, would it be allowed? Much less, would his brother even return his feelings in turn? What if that little mouse-whisper from the middle of the night was nothing more but an unconscious flub sent to dredge into his soul and come up with nothing? _What if?_

The Northern Italian finally gave notice to the peril that soon took over his brother and became concerned. "Is there something wrong, Lovino?" He put his hand upon the tenser one's forehead and pressed down under the hairline. "Are you feeling sick? Your entire face is becoming red!"

_I have to ask him, there is no other choice in the matter. I can't keep going on like this!_ Lovino turned around and stood up from the wooden chair. The height difference was barely noticeable between the two brothers, although it was certain that the Southern was taller than the Northern by barely a few centimetres. He gathered all the remaining strength he could muster through a deep breath of apprehension. _I still cannot believe I am about to say this._ He cursed the wiles of Francis with shame, his bewitching words being like a knotted ahoge that would not unravel. To keep his focus clear and concrete, Lovino placed his hands firmly upon his brother's bare shoulders. "I am nervous to ask this, Feliciano, but…" He could have sworn that his eyes were sparkling as he said his name, and continued on nonetheless, "Would you consider going out to dinner with me tonight?"

Feliciano seemed to lack the proper way to react at first. The sparkles were still lit in his younger brother's eyes, but they were second-rate to the look of suspense on his face as he asked. The face broke down and reformed into a beautifully crafted smile, and he nodded with a brotherly acceptance that could only come from Feliciano. He took Lovino's hands and held them in front of both of each other like a cradle with a bounce upon his feet. "Of course I would like to go out for dinner tonight, Lovino! We've eaten in our house for so long, we've yet to go out together!" His smooth hands held the tough ones of Lovino, seemingly massaging them with both soft touch and encouraging smile.

* * *

So the dinner plan was set. _Of course Feliciano wouldn't get the gist of my question. But I have to try, if it at least means I can get a decent night of sleep from now on._ He thought this as he finished the call to the Baltikan Pan way downtown. It was in a very shady neighborhood with weird intentions, but overall the owner of the restaurant itself was a stand-up Hungarian Madame. Elizabeta Héderváry was, and still is, described by his younger brother to be a well-meaning woman with an independent streak as long as the heaven's. She carried a mean swing with anything she could get her hands on, especially a patented cooking-pan she allegedly keeps by her side nearly all the time as a painful, panging deterrent from hell itself. The description was gathered from those words exactly given in a cheerful tone by his brother, so Lovino had no choice in the matter but to swallow his fear and get them into their car. He put the hood up despite the still-strong sunlight, knowing the trip there and back would leave little light in the imagination, and he would rather not some poor, misguided soul ignite his unstable wrath with a car-jacking.

The brothers two loaded themselves into their red sports car with a festive jubilation in their step, and Lovino promptly drove them down the street. He barely gave a passing glance to the evening-lit street as they neared and crossed and gave a solemn farewell to the home of Roderich Edelstein, of which was filled to the core with German-Prusso- I apologize, I do believe I mean 'Austrian', furniture. It does not matter that most of the advances for Roderich's business descended from either Ludwig or Gilbert or even from the distant but once far-reaching Turk Sadik Adnan; if he had his hand in it, it was of Austrian innovation alone. The urge to spit out of the car onto the pristinely maintained lawn was overwhelming, but Feliciano was wide-awake and too aware to let him have his personal joy. They arrived upon the parking lot of the Baltikan Pan and soon put their car into place. Feliciano was wearing his best, loose fitting clothes that were buttoned only two from the collar. Made of green-silk, perhaps? He thought so because the clothing itself gave little to the imagination about his brother's muscular build from shoulders to legs in black, spandex pants. The emotions were overwhelming Lovino now as he cautiously led both of them through the wood-and-glassed doors and let the exotic aroma's of Eastern Europa's food-stuffs embrace him. It was a cold embrace at first; nothing like what he felt within the confines of his own kitchen or Antonio's on holiday and visits with their spices and stylistic Mediterranean flavorings. These of the Baltikan were a mixture between, obvious, Baltic and Balkan foodstuffs that smelt more like potlucks within potlucks; stirrings of ingredients in ways that seemed bizarre and alien to Lovino and his sharp sense of smell, especially when just smelling them all at once for the first time.

* * *

As expected, the place was relatively accommodating in its décor of basic furniture in blue colours and walls of red with olive gilding. The floors did not catch his eye, being of regularly coloured fur. Besides, his eyes were drawn to attention by the person who was supposed to be waiting upon them, and that was identified as the glorified-in-description Elizabeta herself! Not making any sudden moves to enrage the Hungarian goddess of pan-warfare, Lovino was practically standing at attention in military form, trying not to wrap his arm around Feliciano for mutual protection. Where that arm would go to wrap he was not sure; a shoulder, perhaps? Maybe the hip to bring him- _What the hell am I thinking at a time like this? Get the fuck out of my brain, you disgusting taboo-loving voyeur! This is just a meeting of Italians, and nothing more!_ Lovino quickly shook his head to clear his thoughts, and became as composed as he could to deliver his name for the table for two under the 'Vargas group'. He cringed when she said it so stoutly, the life being vampirishly sapped from the name itself and the announcement being so loud that he thought she might as well shout the secreted taboo Francis had mentioned to the world with he and Feliciano being the ring-leading beasts in loin-clothes and naked flesh. He could not imagine further, nor did he wish to at any point.

The brothers sat themselves down facing each other; only a candle to illuminate their faces and basic dining needs to set them up. From a quick look into the menu, Lovino could already tell that this was not to be an enjoyable experience for his stomach. From as far as he could remember, tomatoes were not grown in the eastern parts of the town, nor did the items ever mention a single piece of western culture. It was a diverse diet of, as stated before, Balkan and Baltic foot-stuffs, and that nary did include any tomatoes at all. All he could see with the word of 'tomatoes' was the Albanian Cutloose, a salad of fresh vegetables, cucumbers and green peppers watered, and olives. The name of the chef is not given, instead being under-scored that it was to have tomatoes, but they would instead be replaced with potatoes as a way to supplement a stock-error. _Fucking. Potatoes._ He hissed in his thoughts, and began formulating a way to ask for the salad alone and without the accursed bastard-seeds. Feliciano himself gave mention of a desire for Cepelinai. Asking wit real curiosity as to what the devil that was, Feliciano responded in turn that it was described in the menu as a Lithuanian dumpling stuffed with minced-meat and cottage cheese, along with mushrooms as well. Oh, and the dumplings themselves? Made of grated potatoes. The Northern Italian seemed pleased to order such a trinket to their Hungarian waitress, so Lovino forged a smile through sheer will and grated emotionally blessed tidings of strength. _I am such a phony-bastard, _his mind chimed in truth, and the faux smile turned his mouth rancid in distaste.

* * *

Both exchanged casual dinner-table conversation as they received their meals. Feliciano ate his in earnest and vigor, while Lovino took nearly two minutes of investigating through the salad to hunt for a stray potato-slice. He seemed reserved and gawky compared to his brother, whom munched upon each and every Cepelinai like a starved man. However, he was the happiest starving man Lovino had ever seen in his life. The smile did not waver even has he chewed and licked his lips for flavor. Suddenly, though, the small rampage of eating came to a halt. Feliciano looked up, his eyes seemingly filled with a twinge of distant concern. "Have you seen Ludwig around town, lately? I have not seen him outside of house home in a week, and even before that he barely came out at all."

Halting an instinctive start, Lovino decided to answer him with an honest kindness instead of performing another demeaning act of feigned interest. "Do not worry, I saw him this morning, fratello." He cleaned his mouth ever so slightly with his napkin, as if to cleanse himself of such dirty orated deeds beforehand. Speaking truthfully without anger of a child, "He was in the park about a mile from our house, reading a newspaper. I didn't know if he had any trouble of his own, since he pretty much said nothing to me." _Nothing I would want to tell you right now, at least._

These words soothed the younger Italian's worries, leaving him with a smile and a sigh of relief. "That's wonderful to hear. I was afraid he was in trouble." He bowed his head slightly as a token of thanks, his smile returning to full-bloom that warmed Lovino's heart in secret.

Both of them ate on in content silence, deciding that the moment they had shared was enough to take from this dinner table. Feliciano looked up no further than to check on Lovino's eating habits, minding his own business. However, his counter-part was not as fortunate to be so clear in mind. Shortly after the smile had faded from both their faces in a covert reflection by Lovino, he had begun to feel faint and perplexed. The room, to him, felt outwardly like a spiral of blurring colours and inwardly to the effect of a hurricanic symphony. To call this a trip would be too insulting to its power; call it more a mental and emotional intervention of the heart, a small and insignificant revolution that means all the world to Lovino, yet minimal and ant-like to the universe as a whole. The background spun still, yet the afflicted was able to grab hold of his world for just a second and hold it steady. There, across the room at another table had sat Annalee Jones with her tropical Caribbean eyes that looked occasionally to her army-green fishers cap that she always wore upon her braided dirty-blond hair. The Conch girl sat with an unlikely partner: Victoria Queau, the Seychellen of French and British upbringing. Her pigtails were as tied as ever with her red-ribbons, and her blue dress was slightly longer for the apparent occasion with her fellow sea-loving friend. Both were admirable young girls in their own rights, until a strange tragedy beset them before Lovino's very crazed eyes: both had the face of Francis the French voyeur in the bat of an eye. The vision itself was dastardly, but the thought sickened as the image of the perverted scoundrel's head was compounded on their bodies. He turned away, the distinction between reality and illusion no longer apparent in that corner. The illusion followed him _within_ his eyes, however, and every face he gazed upon became the Flower Demon himself, facial hairs and all.

Lovino seethed with a shut-jaw and groaned in silent agony, "What do you want?"

The faces chorused, "We want you to do something."

He blinked once, but could not fathom what these devils wished. "Do what?"

Once more they gave their camp replies in unison, "Him."

"What?" The answer to his question was odd. Who were they talking about? And what did they mean by 'do'? Does it carry the romantic connotation that he had heard of before, or perhaps this was a figurative of speech to represent a greater purpose in life? Maybe this was a sign from God, that he was supposed to 'do' away with Francis' influence on his life to break the sacred and highly most forbidden taboo? Perhaps-

"You must make love with the one that has caused you to lose sleep in night past, and conscious decision over your beautiful emotions during the day. You mix your feelings now for your true intentions. Rather, you mistook them for correct reasoning. Let loose your true feelings and give little heed to them! You, you beautiful beast, have been unfairly shackled in your lust and desire. Take it from your own big brother." All the faces raised their leased body's thumbs, almost as if either giving their approval with empty-hand or an invisible rose that is just not there. _Typical god-damn French bastard of the devil is still encouraging the unknown, even in my mind!_

His gaze within the trance lurched one last time to face forward, his ahoge bouncing with it as drowsy as it could. Feliciano had not sprouted the face of this inquiring usurper; rather, it remained frozen with an open-mouthed smile in a single frame of laughter in time. Oh, how innocent he looked without the face of a voyeur. Innocence and brotherhood defined.

As if the world had enough of more than one Francis Bonnefoy, he was dragged down to consciousness where the faces of Annalee Jones and Victoria Queau no longer carried their defects. They were normal now, as far as he could tell and judge from the outside. What if they were still Francis on the inside, a pocketed pervert waiting to be judged? _Judged,_ the thought echoed through empty space, _without the knowing of what they're really like. Perhaps it is none of my business about what they do? Any bastard these days can live a simple life known to all, but another of painful retribution or avaricious lust for skin and wealth-bound to the body behind the initial judgments of his being._ His head would not stop pounding at this relevation ungiven by God unknown, but from himself. The room did not spin, thankfully; it remained stationary in a collapsed pause._ It could be that they should live their true life in private. Or, perhaps, they should be free to be whom they want, no matter what other people judge upon them?_

Feliciano touched his stone-frozen hand slightly, rubbing it with a gentle and cautious caress. "Fratello, what is the matter? Lovino?" The words slapped Lovino out of his trance and brought him back to reality, the brief intermission ending as abruptly as it began. A newer look of concern was obtained and adorned to his face; it was at least three times the fear than what he had shown for Ludwig's absence, yet a hundred times the importance to his brother now than before.

The Southern gave a small reply that was broken in various excuses. A dream, a fantasy, a flight of destiny? Whatever it was, the shock of the real-world of only one Francis came as a surprise when Elizabeta came back and handed them their bill. Her face was angelic, an invitation to break down and cry in relief that there was no more Francis in the area. He took the bill from her and happily paid it, only stopping close of emptying his cheque account only by an upset whine from his brother who saw it as ridiculous. He and his companion shuffled their way out to the car, it being slightly colder and far more dark than when they entered. The parking lot was new to him, just as the world was. The darkness did not invite fear anymore of a sleepless night of conflict, but the release of all his true emotions all at once like a shining star being born into a dark umbra. His was destined from conception yesterday to its birth tonight to be the brightest of them all, giving no heed to any others yet giving head-way to their release as well from their slumbering nursery. As this shining star, Lovino gave no mind to the passing trees or variously spaced-between lots of land owned by the different peoples of Europa. In fact, he did not even notice when they passed Roderich's fancy little hovel. All of it meant nothing now.

* * *

With a gentle click, the front door closed behind them as Feliciano sulked off to bed with a pleased, ditz of an unknowing smile. He had no clue or hint as to what had happened, nor any penchant on what was to happen. In truth, he remembered what he had said last night in full. He did not mean to say it, yet something within his naked body laying a bunk under his brother told him to liberate that thought with a small coo. That was barely a memory for him, and he certainly did not think of it when he heard the door creak once more behind him. Since he was the youngest, he was allowed on more than one occasion to be the first to get ready for individual sleep. Not tonight, though. Tonight was the night of legends, that none would ever see before. He turned around to see Lovino's neutralized facial expression set upon him like a painting intent to look into the depths of the soul. The lights outside of the bedroom were already turned off; peculiar, since Lovino usually kept himself outside in the kitchen to wait patiently. But here he was, an anomaly to behold at the closed door. "Lovino? What're you doing here?" He said this as own fingers were grasping to the ends of his unbuttoned shirt to pull it over his head. He was caught in a fickle of a moment, really.

Lovino slowly walked in a parallel motion towards the beat from Feliciano, his eyes intently keeping their gaze even as his hands took hold of one of the bunk-bed's legs. His hands worked with uncanny precision as they unbuckled the top bunk from the bottom. With the deftness and strength of the greatest animals on the surface of the world but within the confines of his average-muscular build, he lifts up the top bunk and brings it over to a corner of the bed-room.

The Northern had no clue as to what in the world was going on now. _Why did he just remove the top bed?_ He began to ask that very question, but he was forced into continual silence by the realigning of their gazes to each others'. Feliciano saw that his brother looked into him once more with eyes swirling with emotional relaxation, as if he had just let a heavy burden off of his shoulders. "Why're you here, Lovino? I'm getting ready to go to bed."

Oddly enough, Lovino cracked a smile at the question, as if it were a clever joke. The smile did not stretch to his cheeks, instead deviously perching itself upon his face like a gargoyle upon the edge of a cathedral. He took three carefully placed bounds forward, coming face-to-face with his brother. Lovino's heart beat faster as true emotions flooded within him took control of his past, implanted 'reasoning'. The new-found creed was far more accepted within his subconscious than he had anticipated from the revelation at the restaurant, and as a result it laced itself through his muscles and bones to act at once. Restraint was no longer an issue; rather, it was now a key ingredient to go against the taboo that had been presented in eye-view by the Italian coo and the French urging. He was barely a metre away from his brother, but desired to come closer. So he wanted, so he got. But he did not stop when he was standing right near toes-to-toes with Feliciano; he leaned forward from his place to bring his head right beside his. The topsy-turvy mind of Lovino's made sure that his mouth was right near Feliciano's before he whispered his own reply to the igniter of this storm: "Do you know what it means to 'break the ultimate taboo'?"

Sweat rolled down Feliciano's neck as practically a current of static emotion flared through him. As the whisper's breath brushed his ear, his entire body shuttered with excitement and apprehension. Did he know that both of them were on the edge of the world? If so, he did not seem to show it upon his face. Even as Lovino's hand wandered to the under-side of his shirt, Feliciano tried to maintain a solid front with all of his strength. However, the effort was in vain and futile: he managed to give a reply with a stuttering, "Fratello… what is a taboo?"

"I'll show you."


	4. Chapter 4

There was no set rhythm to how he advanced upon Feliciano. He just had no base-of-movement, nor any idea about how to continue from the first wonderful kiss they shared. It was not only instinct, but also pure emotional lust. To put it in a physical description of the events that had unfolded, it would have to be said that Lovino slinked his way towards Feliciano and gently put his left hand upon his face. Both looked into each other's identical amber eyes, the pools of swimming earth flowing gently as the tension reached a point beyond just boiling: it was _overflowing._ With the precise care that a craftsman would give a glass menagerie, Lovino lifted his brother's face closer to his. Their lips puckered, as they came closer, closer, closer…

Full contact was the pinnacle of this overture. There was a small heat growing between both of them as the kiss expanded itself. It began as a small kiss, but both Italians were bound by their own wills to continue this titillating experience. Neither could believe this was happening to either of them, so they simply threw it up in the air as a mere fantasy gone fantastically right. _So soft…_ Lovino's mind registered. His left hand slid behind Feliciano's head, while his laxed right left for the nethers of his hip. This was to pull them closer, now bringing them as close as their clothes would to their own bodies if they were soaking wet. On the way down, he had smoothed his hand upon the silk shirt of Feliciano's and definitely decided without hesitation that the lips won the contest between vivid softness. Shirt itself was a rapscallion within itself, daring to stand against this moment. _Do away with it, and its associates like Pants and Briefs_ his mind ordered upon high. The body complied with earnest, the hand upon the hip moving to arrest Pants while the one upon the face moved downwards to attest to Shirt's pliability.

Without a single thought to his actions, Feliciano's hands sprung up to hold Lovino's lips in place so that they did not shift away from each other as the Southern Italian's hands looked South for the dastardly culprits. Luckily, the Dastardly Clothing criminals were all too willing to allow for their capture, and submitted immediately. First came Shirt, whom was taken up and above and thrown away like a common-day criminal behind the removed top of the bunk bed. Pants and Briefs were harder to reorganize into a new livelihood, so the hands left to reorder Lovino's outfit by removing his own shirt. The light of the moon soon evolved from a single noble ray into a full-on shine. In a cascade of beauty, the illumination revealed two well-built Italian men's skin to be like a fluorescent for the blue-and-white light. Their pants remained adorned for the simple purpose of providing some sort of restraint to their certain-something's, although this male to male celibacy was wearing out its welcome.

Soon enough, the welcome was worn and now the clothes they wore must now bid good-bye to their lovely flesh. The Northerner's pants were first, with Lovino moving sensually down the ripples of his smaller torso's physique. Muscles upon Feliciano seemed to kind of work, although how he got them his brother would never come to understand. The belt was already loosened from previous, non-sexual intent. A zipper was no match for the strong yet gentle hands of Lovino, and its resistance gave way as it unleashed the growing joy from its confines. Feliciano's hips swung sensually to make the pants fall faster, and this nearly drove Lovino _insane._ What a wonderful way to react to this!

To heighten the emotional bond between them, Lovino damn well near ran Feliciano into the wall while carrying him in his hands to push himself against him. His brother held steadfast, though, and tried to bring his brief'ed leg up to wrap around his. The kiss intensified as they pulled closer and closer, and somehow both pants and briefs were lost in the struggle. Both were now feeling their erections in the open air, as the kiss suddenly stopped short with Feliciano's hands claiming their place around his brother's neck, and Lovino's hands holding his shoulders. Both looked down upon their still sub-par tools, knowing deep within themselves that they could be better. Even then, they both blushed with embarrassment as their heats were looked upon by the other. It was positively mortifying to look, yet they couldn't remove their eyes from the lengths. Calculating, fearing, _wanting_, it was a vicious cycle of mental stability.

_Enough is enough. I want to go _now. Lovino made true on his previous notion and scooped up his brother by his legs by hooking his arms under his thighs, his hands upon his surprisingly firm buttocks. He laid him down on the bed like a prince would his prized princess. Their eyes closed again and they shared a quick kiss, barely lasting a minute. With a quick and parting movement of his right hand trailing up the top of Feliciano's left leg, he stepped up at full attention next to the night-stand. The Northerner's eyes pleaded why he stopped the pleasurable acts, but did not follow Lovino's left hand as it opened the drawer and reached inside.

_I had no idea this would actually come in handy like this, but I've got the feeling I'll need it._ Out came his hand, and it revealed a special jar labeled 'Vaseiline'. On his birthday three years ago, Francis was permitted to come and deliver a gift out of a whim by Antonio to try and bring Lovino and him closer together as friends. To Lovino's surprise, it was a gift that was told to be a helpful necessity for untangling those pesky ahoge's when they get tied one way or another by the application of lubricant to make them loose and squeaky. If this taboo-shattering was through intentional planning, then the Frenchman was a mastermind of sexual strategy.

Lovino's mind exactly told him about what to do, and he opened the jar with a hiss of oxygen entering the vacuum-sealed environment. The goo was foreign to Lovino, especially when he began to apply it to his hands. With Vaseline upon the tip of his fingers, he cautiously began to coat his erection with it as well, and immediately upon contact shivered in excitement from touching his genitals and the sensations the jelly gave to the sensitive skin. Feliciano was amazed by the stuff, not taking his eyes off the hand as its fingers were applying the Vaseline. Then again, perhaps it was not only the hand he was watching with those curious, attracted brown eyes. What a lovely audience Lovino had; how better would it be if they started to participate in the activity? With the now-glowing length fully erect, Lovino slipped onto the bed with one knee upon it. He whispered quietly, "I want you to turn around, fratello. I- I read this once in a book I found in Antonio's house. It was for a woman, but it contained a small foot-note that it was for men as well. It confused him then, and it confused him now. Even then, it was worth a try.

In a small, self-contained whisper back, Feliciano asked, "Will it hurt us, fratello? To do this?" He was aware what was going on; living with Kiku Honda did not leave you scarce of his randomly-placed dirty books, especially when the Japanese man was a literal sex-god that had not yet found his womanly-partner. Every awkward finding Feliciano came across only made him more curious, to the point that he asked both his friends about what sex was. What he was told made him lose his naivety, but later on the mood from the moment passed and he was once again his ditzy self.

In response, Lovino brought his hand to the other's head and moved his hair to behind his ear. "Are you silly, mio fratello?" The hand rubbed down to lips and brushed his chin in affection. "I would never hurt you on purpose." Both knew in their hearts that there would be some pain involved, but both were too close to stop now. Their emotions demanded it. Promptly so, Lovino began to position his brother to a sort of way that he was on his knees and arms, his now known-to-be firm buttocks straight ahead of the length. With a nod of encouragement, Lovino was on his knees himself and completely straight-up to look down on his brother's back and body. A moment's hesitation, and he entered. The thrill was bliss refined to a period-dot.

The pain was there, undeniabily there. The yelp provided the conscious acceptance of it and the announcement of such, even taking on the form of a squinted face. Feliciano moaned, "Lovino!", his body leaching forward from the first pump. He felt the size of Lovino's length through the smoothing agent of the Vaseline, and the tingling would never, ever stop. Both of them held in mutual agreement that they would not move even a slight muscle. Each looked into their other's eyes, looking for the numbing effect of another kiss. They would need traction, however. So, Lovino began to move his body back slowly, dragging out his length in a slick manner. Lovino could have sworn that he heard a pop, but did not was too far-gone to mention.

The Italians gasped together with moans and groans in the prime of ecstasy and joy. Lovino was still held up like a tree with his extension reaching deep into his brother, the smacks of their skin clapping faster and faster as they went along. His hands tightened on Feliciano's buttocks to hold both of them in the same pattern, but they wanted to travel further north. To kiss him like this was the greatest objective right now, affirmatively in thought. The tension was rising down below as they kept moving back and forth into each other to the point that Feliciano bucked _back_ to him, pushing his brother further inside as they were practically moving at the speed of the light that shined off moon to reveal their sensual curves to each other.

How could he take this anymore? This pressure was building within both of them, so the moment to kiss was _now_! Lovino curled down with his hands traveling up to hug him with his left hand, and hold both of them up with his right. Their lips met passionately as Feliciano looked back in synchronized pleasure. To compensate for the way they were positioned, with Lovino upon him and Feliciano below, the Southern brother's tongue begged for entrance by pushing inside the Northerner's mouth. It was accepted like a trinket of love. Taste was now also mutual between the two as they continued to fornicate merrily with minds drunken with emotion. It was fantastic beyond compare. The emotions resonated again and again until finally the climax was upon them both. Both grunted their last moans and whispered their warnings. Finally, the apex was reached.

"Feliciano!" Lovino moaned between their kiss, his eyelids closed in pleasure.

"Lovino!" Feliciano returned the name of his brother, his own having closed long before in a similar pleasure.

Lovino's release came first, out of his erection that was firmly placed to the base inside of his brother. The fluids painted the other brother with such tenacity that you would dare-say that they belonged there, no matter what the 'natural order' said about relationships. Feliciano's release came upon the bed shortly afterwards, bringing the warmth to his sheets as he was rubbed against them. Both were amateurs in this art, yet they performed wonderfully to the attest of their orgasms. Lovino shifted him slightly so that he may climb into the bed himself, the drunken daze starting to take hold of him once more. Feliciano brought up a sheet by order of his subconscious, which recognized that they would near to conserve each other as they stayed there together with slowing gasps of breath that eventually turned to snores. Sleep quickly approached them both as Feliciano slept on his brother's chest, his left hand placed upon a muscled peck and his other hand under his body and around the hip to hold them together. And there they stayed, throughout the night in a stolid embrace in the moonlight. Together, just like before, only now with opened passion.

Emotion triumphs.


	5. Chapter 5

The sun was a welcoming alarm-clock. Its basking rays warmed and even invigorated the naked muscles of Lovino's body, his lower-half covered by a bed-sheet that just barely came up to the navel. _My head is _pounding… He groaned within his mind, using his limber right arm to rub his eyes of fatigue. What a pain it was, but how _liberating_ it was! This thudding from his blood-vessels was at one time annoying and painful, but at the same time it was a nice way to awaken from his sleep. However, something was not natural; something not ordained by the laws of slumber in every-day life, especially by chastity and taboo regulations. He felt that he had an extra pillow resting up on him; perhaps he took one of his pillows and switched it down so he could hug it? The pillow was strangely warm, almost like he was hugging a sun-warmed teddy bear. However, the strange thing is, is that this teddy-pillow was warmer than a usually sun-heated object, even if it was made of wool, which it was not; it felt like it was cashmere and silk all wrapped into one. He moved his hand down to see if he could remove the weight from his other arm, which seemed to hold it down in such a way that he couldn't even _feel_ his left arm anymore. What a wearing quandary for such a bright morning. His right hand touched some sort of weird, bobbing object, and that is where it hit him: _it's moving._

When Lovino looked down, he saw something that scared the living Hell out of him. A snoring, naked Feliciano wrapping his leg up to Lovino's thigh, his delicate hands wrapped by left on Lovino's muscular chest to the peck and the right all the way around under Lovino's back to the hip. Every snore was a relaxed 'Ve' for Feliciano, his face smiling as it rested on Lovino's chest in the basking sunlight.

To say that Lovino leaped out of the bed would be an insult to his very-close bending of the laws of space-time. Even the light shining through their windows was not nearly as fast, even to the point that Feliciano seemed to hover in mid-air before gravity realized that the naked form of Lovino was no longer applied to the equation. Like always, the Northern Italian did not notice the movements and continued on in post-euphoric bliss. This is where Lovino began to breath heavily and started to look over the facts: he and his brother went out eating yesterday night, and they came home. What did they do afterwards? The Southern Italian brain kept looking over and over the facts that were presented by the nodes of every memory fiber, but not a single answer turned up a whole scenario. There was some kind of continued movement last night between them that seemed to make both of them sweat until they had glistened. There was moaning and groaning, yet the groans were not of pain but of-

_Oh my god._ Lovino's mind growled in regret. _Why? Why? Oh, God, _Why_?_ He backed himself into the wall, his buttocks feeling unusually firm against the paint. Lovino slowly backed himself to the closet and grabbed as many casual clothes as he could, which included a plain-white t-shirt, jeans, green-white-green boxer-shorts and socks, and as quietly as he could under these circumstances close the door.

Still, Feliciano slept. However, he frowned while there was no one to look upon him, his grip tightening on the bed-sheet in a seeming protest that there was nothing there. One "Ve" was whined, but he did not stir from his slumber.

Why won't the car start-up faster? _God-damn this self-made technology,_ He cursed the ignition that refused to start on a dime, he cursed the wheels that did not automatically go into reverse-gear which resulted in a small and unexpected jolt forward, and he especially cursed the nice leather seating for feeling too well on his bottom. _This is neither the time, nor the mood to talk about this. Shut. Up._ He would have punched himself if he knew he was talking to himself like that, especially now that he knew that he had just fuc- "Shut the hell up! I'm driving here!" Lovino practically squealed that out, tears almost forming around his eyes. Easily, the wind blew those drops away, but he could still feel the salty warmth running down his cheeks. The world around him was going too fast, it was an unreal dream of blurs of objects that were once familiar but now where mere figments.

He could have driven off the face of the world yet still not know where he was heading to, exactly, before he finally caught himself and ordered himself to pull over and think this entire thing over. When he regained his grip on reality, he turned his head around and began to notice that he had no idea where in the _hell_ he was. It was a long highway, with no end in sight to a cloudy horizon that was sweeping in from what his car's directional system labeled as 'East'. He looked South-more from his car and saw that there were several shadows in the field. One was moving cautiously toward his car, seeming to think that the object was a monstrosity of medium proportions. Now that Lovino was able to see at least a little clearly, he could gather that he was in the fields that supplied most of Europa with agricultural needs. The sky was beginning to be split with clouds in the visible distance, with the darkness extending all the way from the horizon in the east and lighter clouds to the west.

The person who was approaching the car had finally reached the line of fence that extended for miles in each direction, over-looking the Ferrari. "That's a nice car you have." It was a quiet mumble that was almost lost among the rumble of the car. To hear the seemingly introverted man, Lovino begrudgingly turned the engine off. Again, the brown-haired man gave a small observation with his timid voice, "You must be from back west in Europa. Are you lost?"

It took a second to realize what the person had said. Lovino shook his head with a quick tuft and looked his new-found companion in the eyes. "Y- Yes I am." There was no real reason to be out here, to be honest. All he was doing intentionally was trying to clear his head from the unmentionable surprise he found this morning, but there was an underlying concern: why did he do… that, exactly? Was it something he ate, something he smelled? Was it some sort of gaseous matter finally taking control of his mind from the perspective of that German bastard? He was being drugged, of course! Maybe even those memories were false, and nothing ever happened at all! Yes, everything has a rational explanation once you get down to it. Conclusive evidence, really; _There's no need for me to be out here after all, if it was all just a dre-_ "Do you know who owns the Baltikan restaurant?" _Damn you, mouth! Don't try and further that idea, just let us _go home_!_

However, the quiet man seemed to swallow his tongue when he heard the question. Despite being in the sun, his skin seemed to turn pale as he regained his bearings. "I- I know of the Baltikan, yes." The man pointed towards the clouded horizon, almost with fear of it, and whispered, "You will find him that way. He is Mr. Ivan Braginski, of Petersburg Corporation. He helps organize our farming operations out here." The admittance to 'help' seemed far more stressed in irony or remission than what anyone would have in mind.

Lovino was just about to give a stalled thanks, stalled due to wonderment about the brunette's hesitation and his own inner-conflict, when a humourously pink Cadillac drove in from further down-east. In the newly arrived car was a blonde woman whom immediately turned the car off and leaned out of the roofless window. "Hello, Lithy!" The voice was like a rhythmical lyric being let out smoothly by a record-player. Her face was very feminine, as well as joyful in seeing the 'Lithy' man that sat on the other side of the fence. She was in, granted, very masculine clothes: black trousers, a red shirt with white buttons, and white-suede shoes.

'Lithy' put his hand to his head, resting the palm firmly upon his face in clear embarrassment. "Feliks, you know how I feel about you coming out here. I have work to do, and it would not be well for either of us if you distracted me."

The woman gave a small whine, leaning back into the leather seats. "You _always_ say that, Lithy! Why must you be so mean?" Her face gave a pout, almost like a disappointed lover.

There was a sigh of exasperation and he raised his hands to show his emotions. "You know exactly why."

_This is awkward. I'd better leave before I get in the middle of a fight._ Lovino quickly took a breath of fresh air and tried to refocus and wrap his side of the conversation. "I'm sorry if I was interrupting something between you two. Should I just leave?"

The 'Lithy' man gave a small jump, realizing just then that Lovino was still there. "No, no, I should be the one that should be sorry. I should've known that Feliks would have come here; he always tries to annoy me when I'm here at work. I am sorry if he has annoyed you."

Raising his hand to assure him, "Don't worry, really; I'll just go on and-" There was a slight pause as he suddenly realized what the 'Lithy' farmer had said. _'He' annoyed me?_ Lovino turned slightly to his left to look back at the parallel Cadillac. The 'woman's' masculine clothes were now explained, and her feminine features were more manly. He saw that his face was a clever grin, like a smooth-talking suave who knew how deceiving he was. The camp-clothing and pink Cadillac suddenly seemed extremely out-of-place, yet explained at the same time. Lovino looked back to Lithy, whom gave a stolid look back. The silence was definitively awkward as Lovino, Lithy, and Feliks looked at each other with the wind blowing past them. _Time to go. Now._ So, he quickly tacked down the wrap-up to the conversation in promptness: "So, this Signore Ivan? He's in the east?" When he received the same type of prompt nod from Lithy, he handed out a polite return-nod and got on his way back down the road.

What a weird way to get directions.

* * *

Toris Laurinaitis was upset about how Feliks butted into the conversation. He was about to meet one of the only people to actually bother coming _out_ here, and he just had to ruin it! Yet still, Feliks leaped out of his effeminate vehicle and approached him with over-exaggerated hip swinging. Toris held up a hesitant, pointing hand and asked, "Why did you just do that? That man was just asking for directions, yet you still came over here and freaked him out!"

Laughing as if the confusion was some sort of victorious game, Feliks gave his nominal response: "Come now, Lithy, it was fun!" The Pole gave a sterner pout than before and reprimanded Toris. "You need to lighten up, Lithy; you should just quit all this farming business and come work with me as a model. It'd be fun!" His voice grew chipper and chipper as his ideas flowed forth from his imagination. "You'd get to wear all the types of clothes I get to wear, and we'd see each other every single day!" Feliks practically squealed at the last idea, clapping his hands together once.

However, Toris wasn't laughing in the slightest. Face somber as could be with little trace of the same enthusiasm as his friend, he simply shook his head again in disbelief. He whispered, "This is why you can never make any friends besides me, Feliks; you're always too eager to scare other people off and just cling on to me." His green eyes blinked once after a short, pitiful stare. "I'm going back to work, Katyusha is probably waiting for me." He turned on his heel and tightened the belt on his farmer's clothes and walked back to his Ukrainian workmate, not giving heed to turn back around to see his friend after the scolding despite the fact that it had ripped into him just as much as he did to him.

Feliks sat silently in the car, looking down in meditative shame. What his friend said was true, but he just couldn't help himself sometimes. But could he admit it? It was all he could do, just sit there in silence, barely holding on to a faint hope that Toris would turn back and recognize him. Oh, how a fleeting request passes in deny by the esoterical man with the blond hair.

* * *

The Ferrari cruised along the road at a steady sixty miles per hour, and the clouds in the sky continued to predictably darken as he headed closer and closer to the East. After five minutes of driving, there was a building upon the horizon. A giant factory-like building that sat upon the once-wild rolling hills in the distance looked down upon Lovino. It was at least three stories tall with various housings all around it. Those were made of what seemed like plywood and cardboard, and looked abysmal enough to be them but large enough to be called houses, and the giant building was constructed entirely of bricks and uniformly placed barred-windows. Lovino pulled the car closer, right to the tip of the yard of the lot, and discovered the strangest anomaly ever: the entire area that was owned by Ivan Braginski was being _snowed_ on. Right on the line of the concrete wall that dominated the border of the lot for as far as the eye could see going left and to the right, there was no snow. On Ivan's side, there was a steady drift of snowfall that refused even by the greatest aeronautic fluctuations. Giving a small, bewildered swear, "Che diavolo?" in confusion of this anomaly, he continued on to pull further.

Lovino's car stopped as ordered by the horridly scribbled sign, which had the word 'Da' at the end, which Lovino had, quite frankly, never read before. _What kind of language is _that_?_ He could only continue to wonder as to what the word 'da' signified, even as he looked to a coated and strangely automatonic-looking young man of about his own age. The person stood in a wooden toll-box, his bright violet eyes now held open with minimal effort and his silky yellow hair domed by a weird fuzzy winter-hat, as he mumbled his welcomes and demands for identification. When he got it, looked it over once and hand it backed in a relatively brief motion, he said, "Welcome back to your home in Petersburg Corporation."

This caused the far-flung Italian to begin to say "But I don't work here", but the guardsman had already opened the black-steel gates to the grounds. _Might as well go in._

From behind him, Lovino could have sworn that the handsome, emotionally-shackled young man had said in return, "Doesn't matter; everyone works for Mr. Braginski." That ghostly mumble sent a small shiver down his spine about the impossible environment around him, and the reason that there were so many fearful predictions of whom this Braginski really was. He brought his car up to a parking-space, and thus began to gather the confidence to go inside the menacing building. There, he knew, would be where his fate would be found.

* * *

The lobby of the building was not as menacing as the outside suggested. There was a man with glasses busying himself with a computer behind a desk, several chairs laying around in no particular order, and a general theme of 'grey'. Everything in the room was grey: furnishings, floor, wall, desk, computer, chairs, _everything!_ The only things that were not grey in the room was a pair of sunflowers in a grey vase, Lovino, and the silent, analytical secretary, but even then the busied man seemed bland. Even when the South Italian approached the desk, the glassed man gave but a small murmur of welcome and instructions to sign himself in. When Lovino had done so although heeded by the poor language and sentence structure and the massive spamming of the word 'da' over and over again at random intervals. _What kind of mad-house is this place? Everyone seems to be hypnotized or something._

So, he took a seat after feeble standing-and-waiting in the near-desolate lobby. His clothes were sort of wet from the sudden burst of snow he met while getting out of his now-roofed Ferrari, and the cold touch to his skin made him shiver. Whispering, "Think about something else; you'll get over it eventually," about the cold, Lovino put his mind to the task. Tomatoes, pasta, the Ferrari, his home that sat near the beach, Feliciano-

Okay, bad example. Memories of the other night surged forward and gripped the Italian's mind, of every graphic and obsence detail in the short taboo they committed. It may have _seemed_ to have been extremely short in duration, but this must be considered: that was the first time that Lovino had ever fucked someone, whether man or woman. It would remain to be called 'fucked' and nothing else; not until he got to the bottom of this, which he would not be able to do so until he finally calmed down. _Think of something else, anything else._ His adopted father came to mind, whom he went to see just the day before. _Antonio._ "Oh _god_." Lovino whimpered in regret, propping his face in his arms, which were in turn propped on his thighs. "What the hell am I going to do? How do I even _explain_ this to you?" His feelings were not exactly regret, but a concoction of fear of judgment fused with an inane fear of disgusting the person who had been his practical father for as long as he could remember, or at least as far as he could remember. Obviously, Antonio had expected Lovino to fuck a woman, but definitely not his brother. Would he yell at him for doing such an incestuous deed? Two small tears formed as Lovino caught on to the creeping realization that he had never, _ever_ been yelled at by Antonio for something like this. Only two times did his adopted father ever raise his voice _at_ him, but that was because he was putting his own personal safety on the line as a little child. Now, however, he would have to face him as an adult. "What'll I do- ?"

"Mr. Braginski will see you now." Chimed Lovino's current saviour of reality, the bespectacled, blonde secretary, whom did not turn from the computer's screen.

Wiping the small tears from his face quickly to recompose himself, Lovino stood up and bravely walked through the doors. There was a long, empty hallway with no furnishings on the walls. Its floors and ceiling were different, though; they were white, spotless square tiles that shined with the fluorescents placed at regular intervals. The walls remained grey, though. A blinding tunnel of white boxed in by grey; what a fitting end.

Small notes of music began to make themselves evident from the end of the hallway as Lovino strode closer. The notes became stronger, the bass grew in its solid epic, and a lyrical voice was heard singing to the beat. It was not from the song's chorus, though; it sounded far too clear in the muffled echoes, and perhaps a bit off-beat. "Vsyo vo mrake nochi svyzano s mestyu! Vsyo vo mrake nochi svyazano s nej!" As the music grew, so did the joy and excitement the voice began to exude, until the moment came that Lovino stood directly outside of the door of the singer and the chorus. Hesitant at first, he saw no choice but to enter and face what was coming to him.

* * *

This room was entirely different from the others, even from the _building._ Its walls were coloured with green, the floor still as white as the hallway but with fancier tiles. There was furniture to spare all over the place, a triumph of opulence focused in a single location. There, behind a grandieous desk that sat as a vanguard to a humongous level of shelves on a wall that contained what could be over a hundred bottles, sat a man with his back turned to Lovino. Obviously, he was overjoyed with how the song was climaxing, his thick voice rising with the temp, "Ey, vsya nechist', chto mne podvlastna, k nyet leti streloy! Pust' pokonchat s etoj neschastnoj!" Evidently, the song was just about to finish with music growing faster and faster. However, before the clearly over-enthusiastic man managed to complete the song en bravado, he had probably noticed that his doors were opened. With a quick clap, the music immediately halted before reaching the crescendo, and he turned his seat around. "Welcome, may I offer you a drink of vodka, da?"

Lovino could not grab a feasible description of the man's features due to him being too far away into the office, but not far enough that his voice was unhearable. "No thank you, sir, I don't drink." That wasn't entirely untrue; he didn't even know what vodka was, so he did not drink it. He _has_ had wine some times before, thanks to Antonio's insistence on jubilation. Due to the 'situation' from last night, however, Lovino did not want to risk anything.

As he grew closer, Mr. Braginski's features became evident. He was definitely taller than Lovino, practically a tower alone in his revolving, leathered chair. Mr. Braginski's eyes were a light violet that, although placid at first, seemed to twitch back and forth, up and down as if he were examining a person like an extensive document. At least, that's how Lovino felt right then and there, and his discomfort seemed to not be lost on the boss-man. "Come now, please sit down, da? You must have something to say if you have come all the way from the West to here in the cold, da!"

Lovino was caught off-guard by the insight of the man. "How did you know I'm from the West, if I may ask, Mr. Braginski?"

This caused the man to laugh, kind of. It was hard to tell, since the laughs sounded like 'Cole', or perhaps 'Kol'. When he settled once more, he said "It was easy to tell, da. Your skin tells that you are not one to be hidden from the sun, and there is rarely any sunlight on _my_ side of the wall, da." The man paused for a moment, thinking carefully, then a warm smile grew once more. "Oh, and please do not call me 'Mr. Braginski', da? Please call me 'Ivan', it is what I would most like to be known as, da."

Despite being very intuitive and subtly threatening with his calm demeanor, he was starting to annoy Lovino with his constant nonsense of saying the word 'da' over and over again. His mind started to formulate various ways to tell him to stop, but none of them seemed sensible, classy or overall gentle. Lovino was never good at that; not by a long-shot. So, instead, he simply confirmed what the Russian said. "Very well, Ivan." Taking a seat in front of the desk, the South Italian's mind was flustered, yet organized, at the same time on what to ask. He started off with, "Do you own the Baltikan Restaurant on Danube Way?" _What a stupid question; I already have the answer to that!_

Ivan did not seem to mind, which he replied with a simple "Da." Thankfully, he did not add a second 'da' to it, or Lovino would have figuratively snapped.

"If you do not mind me asking, but do you serve any of the foods with… illicit ingredients?" There was a pause as the two looked each other in the eyes, forcing him to continue on. "There was a slight altercation between myself and my partn- accompaniment, so I wanted to know if there is any reason to suspect the food I had." _In other words, are you the bastard responsible for making me fuck my brother?_

This visibly perplexed Ivan, whom rubbed against the chest of his tan jacket, as if to touch something was there. However, he had nothing adorned upon his neck, and his hand realized this as it dropped back down to a neutral position. It was a sad sight, really; it seemed that there was something special once there, only now disappeared. His thick-accented voice gave no hint of the qualm, as he responded, "I would not say; the Baltikan is generally run by Elizaveta and whomever she chooses as cook, da. Tell me, what do you think about discussing this over a drink?" Before Lovino could object, Ivan quickly arose from his chair in a display of staggering height and turned to his obscenely large casing that lined almost the entirety of the wall. "I have vodka from all around, da. Would you like to start with a regular bottle of vodka, or diet vodka, da?"

Confused, Lovino asked, "Regular or diet?"

A small chuckle gave way. "Yes, of course, da. My doctor tells me that I must cut back on vodka, so now I have two kinds for regular occasions: regular, and diet, da." He gave a small shrug and a sly smile to the 'diet' bottle. "Diet vodka is just regular vodka, only it is only filled half-way through the bottle, da." Ivan turned back and held up the two bottles. "Which would you like?"

A humongous sigh escaped Lovino's lips as he grew more exasperated. "Please, Mr. Braginski, just _tell_ me: do you put anything in your foods that would cause me to do something indecent?"

Slightly caught off-guard, Ivan responded frankly, "Which food did you have, da?"

"I had the…" _Blast, what was it's name? Alpinian Footloose?_ There was a long 'uh', accompanied by "The Albanian Cutloose. It's a salad."

If Ivan was in chuckles before, now he was in hysterics. His laugh of 'Kol' rumbled throughout the spacious room, making the hallway outside sound confined. "You must be joking me, da?" His laughter turned to guffaws. "I would never allow vodka to go into baby-food like that. I can assure you, there would never be vodka in your salad, da."

As the laughter was going on, Lovino looked down in shock as to what that meant. _There was no alcohol in my food? I wasn't _drunk_…?_ This was a quandary within a passionate enigma that overtook him last night, both he and Feliciano. It was _fucking_, it was _immoral_, it was _taboo…_

… it was freedom. He had the freedom of choice to do what he wanted, or whom he wanted. He choose to do what he did. Was it the right choice to make? For himself, for Feliciano, for anyone? Would anyone have the right to judge him if he let the truth come out, or would he have the right to force Feliciano to forget everything that happened? Questions without answers flooded throughout his mind, and once again his saviour was a beaconed cry from a small machine placed firmly on Ivan's desk. The machine was not the 'again'; it was the Estonian's voice from the lobby on the machine, screeching out to his boss. "Sir, are you there?"

Finally, Ivan had finished his laughing and answered his assistant. "Go ahead, Eduard, I am in a good mood, da." Even his _voice_ was filled with receding laughter now.

His secretary, however, did not bring good news with him. In fact, the machine's small speakers almost cracked as he hurried. "Sir, there's a man from the West coming up to see you! He said he was going to talk to you, but I was not able to catch whom he was!"

Faster than a speeding bullet, Ivan quickly pressed the receiver button again, all humour dead within him. "Did you _see_ who it was, da? Give me a _name_, da!" Only a whimper complied with Ivan's demand, which caused him to seethe in anger. The Russian lowered his head and let his finger slide from the talk-button, his eyes examining something unknown upon the desk. Under a thick, mingled Russian accent, the man mumbled "If it has to be like this." His strong hands grabbed a lower drawer's handle in the desk and threw open the compartment. Inside the wooden door was a led pipe of at least, which Ivan took with earnest as he arose once more.

Lovino merely watched on in horror as the Russian crept around room. He moved with tipsy-toes as he 'hugged the walls', so to speak. Ivan's back remained to the wall, his left hand holding the pipe while his right continued to lightly palm the wall as he walked. "What's going on?" Lovino whispered, but was silenced by a glare from his host.

Ivan touched his bare neck once more, like before, and his brows furrowed in contained fury. "Something that should have gone on a long time ago. I am taking back what is mine." As he said this, he reached the doorway to his office and stood to its left. A single finger raised to his lips, sushing any further noise as another finger pointed towards the door to indicate where he was planning to meet the 'Westerner'. Both heard the footsteps that fell in a hurry as the unbeknownst figure strode towards the door, and the suspense reached its critical level with Ivan raising the pipe with two hands to the door's enty-way.

The door opened with haste, and Ivan whispered "Do svidaniyaa!", his wicked grin savouring the last moments.

Out from the door came a tall, up-standing figure in a dark blue, buttoned overcoat came marching through the door. His figure was obviously strong, only hidden by the less-than-revealing clothing, but, by god, his defining feature would have to be his _eyebrows._ They were ginormous things, seeming to take up most of the man's forehead as they scanned the room with surprise at Lovino's solitary presence. "Ivan?" The British accent left only one conclusion to both occupants of the room: it was Arthur Kirkland!

Ivan stopped in his swing, the grunt of the force required to halt himself coming out of his mouth and startling Arthur. The Russian grunted in disbelief, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "Do you have any idea how close I came to making you into a splattered painting, Arthur, da?" The arm holding the pipe went slack as Ivan turned-foot towards the desk with a visibly and suddenly exhausted look dawning upon him.

Arthur, however, was less than enthusiastic by the Russian's sort-of expressed relief. "What in the _bloody_ hell were you thinking about doing? Were you planning on taking a swing at me with that thing?" The Brit's surprised expression was priceless; Lovino wish he could have been closer to fully appreciate it in its comedic glory.

Another grunt, "I wasn't aiming for you, da. I thought you were someone else." He reached the desk and clicked Eduard back on. "Eduard, I am going to have to have a 'talk' with you within the hour about how you need to take your head up from that damn computer before I _make_ you unable to look at it, da." He did not hesitate to shut the machine on his desk off and load himself onto the chair. There was the sound of a pipe falling onto wood, and a drawer closing shortly after. Ivan looked towards Arthur as he came closer to the desk, albeit with more caution, and he simply raised his hands in a shrug, "What could you possibly want with me, Arthur?"

To this, the Brit sighed in similar exhaustion, bringing out a notepad from his breast-pocket. "You know how he feels about you, Ivan. If he so much as found a speck of dust in his ice-cream, he would call you a criminal and run to everyone asking for us to curse your name in unison."

Ivan smirked bitterly, "And you would probably do it on a moment's notice, da."

Arthur pretended to not hear him. Instead, his green eyes looked to the top of his equally blue constable hat and he began to do some kind of imaginary remembering of a vicious cycle. "So, let's go over this one more time for argument's sake. How well are you treating your employees in Petersburg Corporation?"

"Did you not see the fine accommodations I offered to those who did _not_ own a home themselves, da?" He raised his hand, as if pointing directly to the housings through the brick walls. "I feel that when those who are unfortunate in their lives come and live closer to Mother Russia, we all become one" He coughed slightly, and added one more thing to the sentence, "big happy family, da."

A page fluttered on the pad, and the Brit asked another standardized question. "Do you think you could treat your workers any better?"

This, somehow, was the pathological last straw on the camel's back for Ivan, whom stood up again despite his fatigue and threw his hands in the air. "Oh for the love of God, do we have to go over this every month, da?" He paced away from Arthur and Lovino, moaning and yelling at the top of his voice. "Why must you give the same questions, and I the same answers? My comrades are working fine under my nice, comfortable, iron grip, and there is nothing more to be said!"

"These aren't my questions you drunkard _twat_, I'm just reading them off. How do you think I feel, having to memorize this cock-and-bull buggery?"

* * *

Lovino didn't even notice these two human beings as they had their shouting-match back and forth on things he didn't even realize he was listening to. He took his leave as Arthur tried to walk after Ivan's patrolling pace around the room, their shouting still bold and clear. The corridor to the lobby was no longer as far-reaching as he had once walked, and the snow no longer as cold as he had once felt. His car was not nearly as fast, nor as slow, as he had remembered. The secretary was not as meek as he remembered, nor the fields of grains and other maize and so on were not so much as a river, but as a beautiful ocean of agriculture that he didn't even think twice about. Was this how it felt the night before, to no longer care about what the world said? The steady hum of his engine and the growl of the road under him fueled his way back home, all the way up the street and into the drive-way of his home.

It was, what, nine o'clcok now? The sun was higher in the sky than when it was the day before, but still was just as warm. _This was all a dream all along. The Ivan, the fucking, everything was a dream. I bet if I go back to bed and just try to sleep, I'll wake up in a normal world again. I won't have to go far away to get an answer from a drunken mobster, or have to strain myself to understand the concepts of taboo in relation to my normal life._ His hastily-thrown together outfit peeled off with smooth motions. He left the clothing around the bed along with the others, and he slipped into the covers right with Feliciano, whom was _still_ asleep. The unconscious brother reacted to the newly refound body-heat by wrapping his arms once again to Lovino's body, but the Southern Italian no longer fought it. _Just… wake up. A dream come true, a fantasy gone wrong? I do not care, as long as I can feel something important again. Anything, give me _something_ to hang on to!_

A small yawn was barely audible from his chest, and in a deft motion a small kiss was planted on his face. Lovino's eyes cracked open to see a beaming, smiling brother of his with sun-shined hair and eyes. The hair did not burn despite its fragile and elegant appearance, nor did the eyes blink or even wince in pain from the light. Happiness looked up to confusion, with the audacious granting of a token called a 'kiss'.The confused brother could not even realize what was going on, so all he could ask was "What?"

Lovino could have sworn his heart broke when the cracked, newly-awoken voice of his brother, whom was now lying fully nude on his own bare body, said, "That was for never leaving me, mio fratello." Feliciano's arms slid off of their posts as holding him up while leaning off of Lovino's muscled chest and hugged the brother fully. "I'm glad you did not leave me." If there were tears of joy coming down Feliciano's voice as he praised his brother with exaltation fitting that of what Antonio had once described, in passing, as a 'lover', there certainly were those coming down Lovino's face. But why, he did not know; not at this moment in time.


	6. Chapter 6

You could say that waking up together was unremarkable, in that there was nothing different from the norm. Before, both brothers had slept in their different beds under different sheets naked of their different clothes. The bunk bed brought them closer, but not nearly as close as when Lovino had woken up with Feliciano literally _in his arms._ The man looked like a delicate flower, slowly bringing himself out of the bed with care and precision in the sun-light as if there was a wind that could push him over. Too tired to get out of the bed at first, Lovino kept his distance by simply laying on the bed while he watched his brother re-dress. It was a subtle emotion, but could it be that the Southern Italian was feeling _sad_ that his brother was putting his clothes on? What a strange notion.

Breakfast was prepared as it normally was: Lovino produced the bread-rolls and jam while Feliciano got the home-made cappuccino going. Once, while learning to do _only_ cappuccinos, Feliciano accidentally put the jam in the pot, rather than the espresso, since he got mixed up with the jobs he was supposed to do. _What a klutz_ Lovino smirked as he remembered that day over a year ago. The meal was ready at ten-thirty o'clock, which was uncharacteristically late in the day for the brothers to have their breakfast. Then again, what has been normal for them since last night?

Awkward silence was protracted between the both of them, their identically-coloured eyes scanning the others. Lovino took a bite out of his roll as he noticed a growing intent to speak within Feliciano, and gave a small nod to show he was also willing to talk. So, the Northern took the lead. "There's another town-hall meeting going on today." He rubbed his mouth clean of crumbs, creating a pause to remember something for the continuation of his sentence. "You did not go to any of the other ones, did you?"

Lovino shook his head, remembering that he always acquiesced the requirement of his presence, letting Feliciano substitute for him every single time. _Antonio always tells me brief stories about those meetings, but I never get around to actually going._ Always the rebel, he refused to conform to such a strange idea of a meeting-place for everyone in Europa. It was just too _open_, too _direct_ for Lovino to even care for. If someone had a problem, why could they not just go and deal with it directly? Why must everyone get involved and discuss it like some sort of stupid Honour Society? _Just fix what the fuck it is that's bothering you! This shit never happened back when I was a kid!_ He let his mind wander on the memory of his childhood, or anything from his past, really, but it was suddenly reeled back by a small and sudden headache. Lovino kept a straight-face, but it still bothered him as he answered his brother. "No, I did not. The idea is stupid, and anyone who buys into that 'everyone works together against their own differences' is a god-damn fool," He took an exasperated breath, "But I'll go with you anyways."

"Wait, fratello, you don't have to go on _my_ account!"

Lovino raised his hand to silence his brothers' back-stepping. "I'm not just going there to please you, Feliciano; I'm going there because I'm interested in what goes on over there, and I would like to see it for myself." That was partially true, in a sense. After meeting the people who worked for the Petersburg Corporation, he was intrigued by the wonderment as to how the meeting-hall itself worked. The corporation and the town were always at odds, with the town trying to stop financial and forceful encroachment and monopoly while the corporation was, quoted, "After its own interests". Lovino could not care less about what happened, as long as it stayed far away from his family.

Feliciano blinked in surprise, clearly taken-aback by the legitimacy of his brother's acceptance of the offer to go to the town hall. The surprise gave-way to a warm little smile in gratitude for Lovino's unprecedented kindness. "Thank you, fratello."

* * *

Getting dressed after breakfast was as awkward as awkward could get. The room still bore the smell of their musk, their sweat seemingly etched into the bed-sheets like an invisible ink for a crime-scene. Lovino was only able to notice this unremarked imprint when he was in the room himself; he had made the point to stay out while Feliciano was changing his clothes to avoid any remembrance of the night before. The night before, the night before, _everything in his mind is about the goddamn night before!_Lovino, cleverly, did not change into the clothes he wore on his way to Petersburg, but rather he chose a more official sort of clothing. It wasn't a suit or a fight-cloth, exactly, but it did its job well in making him look like he gave a shit; the magic of Italian apparel.

Lovino stopped his mind in place, backing up to what he had just said. _What's a fight-cloth?_ He wondered to himself. He had no idea what 'fight cloth' even meant, but when he had asked Antonio why there was a tan jacket with two large pockets in his closet, along with a matching pants, navy-blue tie and a close-fitting deep-red shirt. _What did he say about that, again?_ The headache reared its ugly face once more, forcing Lovino to let the subject alone. He just took his black, loose jacket, a light-green shirt and dark pants and left the room to meet his brother out at the car. And thus, inside the closet, the 'fight-cloth' hung at the very the back of the closet with the name 'Lovino Vargas' stitched right into the hem of the collar.

* * *

The trip to the town hall took less than twenty minutes in the Ferrari. During its entirety, Feliciano eagerly pointed out their 'friends' or 'neighbors' in their cars, going exactly the same way to the same destination. Most of the time, Feliciano acted like a mix between an eager puppy with its head out in the wind-sheer of the car, or simply an over-excited child that sees a friend of his in a super-market, and today was no difference. If the car-ride was any longer Lovino had sworn he would've gone _insane_ from how Feliciano pointed out every single person that happened to be on the road in their cars beside them, but the minor blessing of the town-hall being located close to their own home was granted upon him. It's a natural gift of Feliciano's to make you want to both hug him to death and to slap the freaking crap out of him; must be an Italian thing. How ironic.

As both of them got out of their car, which they parked right next to an inconspicuous black Volkswagon convertible, Lovino was the first to realize that near the glass-doors of the town hall was Peter Kirkland. He was noticeable, since he was leaning directly on the brick-laid building in casually clad blue-and-white clothing as if he were counting sheep in his mind to the low rumble of conversation from the building. The young man had grown up quite a bit since his old days of being ignored by the rest of the town; he had reached a very decent height, being just a few inches shy of his elder brother Arthur. But, still, he was doomed to be the ass-end of jokes about his general lack of notability, as well as to be in the umbra of his more-powerful brother. Lovino _would_ feel for him since he had somewhat felt the same way about his own sociably-accessible and somewhat influential brother, but he couldn't just help but join in the general joke. So, he did not dare to stir the walking-and-swimming British pun, and continued into the building.

_Goddamn, this building is annoying._ It was empty as could be from both its lack of any filling, it was just one hallway directly to the 'main hall' or whatever the hell it was called, and it had the weakest colours imaginable to a human being. The Southern Italian was, by no means, fickle on any colour at all, but the straight-hallway to the center of the building was draped with wallpaper of pale beige, and the carpet could barely be described as a coarse peach. The very sight of the relatively spacious hallway, built so that probably more movement could take place, was enough to cause a feeling of claustrophobia to Lovino. _The stupid colours look like they're about to crush me._ Regardless, he braved through it with Feliciano close enough to his body to perhaps hold his hand, but not so that he would be inclined to. In the middle of the building, there was a gigantic room that accommodated perhaps upwards of forty people, with only three chairs remaining empty. This exact calculation was evident because almost _everyone_ in Europa was present and accounted for, with the exception of the newly arrived Italian brothers and one unknown person whom would be doomed to a lonely corner in the back over-watch that looked down the sloped rows for the middle head-council seats. Oh, the head-council, what a wonderful bunch they are: Ludwig Beilschmidt, Francis Bonnefoy, Arthur Kirkland, Antonio Carriedo, Berwald Oxenstierna, and one last unoccupied seat with the words 'Mr. Braginski' on a little, folded-up card displayed on its desk. The council weren't much to speak of in terms of power; they were simply the men that were trusted by the community, _or at least the parts of the community that showed up to this horse-shit,_ to do what was needed for the greater good of everyone. However, that doesn't mean that they were one hundred percent golden: Arthur was renowned as to be the smartest out of them, while Ludwig was placed as the physically strongest. Antonio was the most tactful of the councilors, so he acted as the mediator between the various and commonly fidgiting nations. Berwald Oxensterna, on the other hand, Lovino had no idea who the _hell_ he was, so it'll just be said that it was impressive that he could get onto the council at all.

Speaking of them, they all were sitting presently in the order described as before, with looks of unnatural dismay. While Arthur was rubbing the temples on his head, Berwald was cleaning his glasses while exchanging terribly stoic small-talk with his contrasting counter-part Antonio; the familiar Spanish was legitimately trying to talk with his seat-neighbor, but the way the Swede carried on with silence and small words was breaking even him down. Finally, Francis was looking across the crowd to either the women or men, and Ludwig was beginning to look slightly miffed as to how disorganized everyone in the room was. Instead of there being everyone sitting in orderly fashions, there were groups stationed all around the room. Each group looked suspiciously at the others, whispering under their voices as the general chatter drowned out their true meanings and intent. Each glare from one group of people was met, in turn, by their own versions as each person seemed to hide their suspiciousness with faux-hubbub.

_What a fuckin' pig-stye,_ Lovino's mind taunted. He sat his brother right next to him as they sat in the middle row, right next to Timothy and Laura De Wit. Both were known for their squabbles over almost everything that they managed to find to fight over, and, like always, they always blew over and simply went on being the Dutch brother and Belgian sister. _If only the rest of these bastards could learn from them and settle down already._

His quip seemed to be answered not by the councilors down in their little desks, or by the individual effort by Ludwig to arise at that very moment with a large and disappointed breath within his throat, but by the single door to the room being opened. It was a deafening silence that followed with a casually-paced stride in the outer-hallway, until a loosely-dressed figure in a sort of brown-pressed jacket emerged. It was a man with glasses, a pointed ahoge that bounced right in front of his blue-and-bespectacled eyes. He stood at the open door's frame with clenched hands on his hips and vigour in his sway. "Hey there, all! How're you all doing?"

If there was a singular person that everyone seemed to know, as far as they could remember, it would have to be this man: Alfred Jones. _By God, is this ass-hole famous._ Alfred was renowned by the town as being the main benefactor for every person in Europa, as well as in Asiatan, the neighbouring village right across the way towards the East. His hand was in every large-scale and even small-scale activity, whether it be his monetary alms or his strong, energetic presence in the general vicinity, he would always be around to interject. The entire room, on the drop of one of the admittedly poorly-fashioned dimes Europa relies on, became silent. Even Francis, the ambiguous rebel of the council with his antics all-abound, seemed to sit at attention with one of the most serious of faces ever witnessed on a Frenchman. The German cleared his throat hesitantly, standing up to address Alfred's entry to the room. "Hello, Mr. Jones, we're just beginning the meeting on schedule on-time and uninterrupted. Correct?"

Lovino looked around with amazement as every single man and woman of eligible age to be here nodded in unison. There were murmurs from here to there, of course, but not a single one dared to raise their voice above the awe-inspiring Alfred's. As usual, the South Italian tried to pretend that he did not care one bit about what was going on; however, he could not ignore the growing discomfort with how his brother was so in-tune with the rest of the community. Feliciano nodded exactly on time, without a moment's hesitation or even a blink out of place. Oh well, _He's always' been the sociable one._

What a boisterous laugh the American gave! It echoed through the chambers to every ear present, yet extended the momentary bark to a horde of hounds' calls. "That's alright, Ludwig, take your time. I just wanted to pop in like always and see how everyone is doing." Without waiting for a response, Alfred immediately sat himself in that lonely chair right in the back of the room.

This continued silence was fucking _deafening_! You could hear the heart-beats of the man across the room, all the way down to the point of the blood pumping through each chamber; even a spastic angina would have been a viable noise to be heard, although it wouldn't exactly be such a wondrous revelation for the person in question. Lovino thanked God for the meeting finally getting under way, because the boredom of in-town politics and that insurmountable minute of one person talking in a room of many. Thanks to his inherent inability to care for the outside world, all Lovino heard were random names of men and women that took the small podium in the front to address the room and the council, but not the issues that they raised. All of them were boring, especially the very first person to go up: Roderich goddamn Edelstein. The _prima donna_ of the town with stereotypically fluffy-spiked hair carried himself around in a suit, even doing a drawl with his voice. Usually, Lovino would make his opinion on the Austrian known by rising up from his chair and shouting inconsistent heckles at him, but for some reason he could not bring himself to do it right now. Perhaps it was the nagging feeling in the back of his mind? It was not a new feeling; he had been feeling it for the last three hours now, ever since he thought back to those mysterious clothes in the back of his closet. Sure, the head-ache that came forth from trying to remember what those hard-fabrics were for was gone; however, afterwards, there was this reminder in the crevasses of his thoughts that he was missing something important. It grew stronger when Alfred entered the meeting-room, but he just could not place what the hell it was. The feeling was keeping him from focusing on heckling Roderich, and thus was starting to piss Lovino off. _What the hell is this crap? Is this what Feliciano goes through every month with these morons, feeling like he's missing something?_ What a confusing place, this 'union' was. All this emotional double-thinking and the antics from this morning with traveling all the way out east has tired him out; all he could ever want now is to go to sleep and forget yesterday and today ever happened. Boredom once again took his mind away to some far off time that he knew would not cause him to feel a stabbing pain within his mind: his childhood with his adopted father, Antonio. What a beautiful blur the meeting became as he floated away ever so slightly, unaware about the fact that Feliciano was quietly looking upon him with a visage of fondness.

* * *

An hour and thirty minutes was a good nap by anyone's standards. If it was during a moment where there was little to listen to or to do and you really needed the sleep, every second was worth it. Sure, the Southern Italian was still drowsy, but at least the remembrance of those mysterious head-aches was now elusive to his focus. He had been awakened by a gentle shove delivered by his brother to his shoulder, and he stirred slowly but surely. Mostly everyone in the community had taken their leave, and all but Arthur Kirkland of the council had left through the elk-wood door behind the council's tables. The Englishman was clearly discussing something of importance with Alfred, but he Lovino could not tell from his own resting-position in the back what the conversation's subject was. _Whatever._ He let out a gigantic yawn with a stretch of his arms behind his head, and looked up to his brother. "Buon giorno, fratello."

This made a small giggle return from Feliciano. "Buon pomeriggio, mio fratello. How was your nap?" He helped Lovino stand up from his seat to stretch his legs.

In response, the Southern Italian gave a stiff shrug. "It was nice, I guess." He rubbed his eyes clear of slumber and gave another response. "How was the," a small 'uhm' escaped his lips before finding the words he was looking for, "'meeting'?" It wasn't that he really cared, but if there was anything that was of serious consideration for him, Feliciano would know best to tell him now. It was not the case, however, so both of them proceeded to their car at a moderate pace. Mathias Koehler, the Danish gatekeeper for the Scandinavian cul-de-sac to the north, stood by his own car with a clique of other men by his car. Among them were the Bulgarian mine-worker of the south-east end of the far-reaches of Europa, Hristo Prandjeva, Timothy De Wit, and the Slovakian lady's man Ondrej Kováč. They were standing outside of a relatively large car that was holding the other Scandinavian's who came along with Mathias and Berwald to the meeting, and seemed to be relatively closely knit in friendly conversation. _What a bunch of weirdo's._ Lovino just could not comprehend the surrealism of standing around a car and just _talking._ Don't they have anything else to do, rather than dilly-dallying?

He had a right-mind to hurry Feliciano along by placing pressure upon the square of the back of his casual-shirt to get them away from those socializing whatever's. However, he did not do so and proceeded with his brother back to their car. The trip back home was unadventurous and less mind-bogglingly annoying due to Feliciano keeping his mind off the road while sitting in the passenger's seat. Such peace and quiet allowed him to think of going to Antonio's. It was a slow decision to make; the severe implications of going to his home were weighing down upon him. What if he blurted out a single hint about that romp, that _abomination_ of classical society and order? He is not prepared for that, not by a long shot!

"Fratello? Why are you not getting out?" The voice of Feliciano inquired politely as he stood with the car door open.

How queer; he had managed to drive them all the way home and up the drive-way. The gulls of the beach were far in between in the blue skies, with little heed to the growing storm-front that was crawling steadily by short-winds in the east. Lovino snapped out of his recurring questionnaire and gave his brother an answer. "Don't worry, fratello, I'm just going out for a bit to visit Antonio. I'll be back in an hour or so." Something of a reassuring smile came over him as he leaned to close the car in case Feliciano forgot to do it himself. "Alright?"

Those big, puppy-dog brown-eyes gave Lovino the chills as they transformed from inquisition to understanding. Barely any person gave a notice to that gift of his brothers', not even himself, but Lovino bore the brunt of it dead-on along with a disarmingly naïve grin. "Alright. Enjoy your visit. Come back soon!" And, of course, the big, fluffy idiot-of-a-_fratello_ forgot to close the door and immediately turned to go into the house.

_What a loon._ A genuine smile grew again on Lovino's face, and for a split second he was back to normal. No longer was he plagued by any worry; rather, he was calmed into serenity by the abstract hunkey-doryness that their lives now reassumed. It could've all been just a dream, even waking up together in each other's arms? Yes, yes, it was entirely possible that he was losing his _god damn mother fucking mind over something that didn't even happen_! What a wonderfully flexible insanity he was bestowed with; it went awfully well with his foot as it pressed the pedal further to the metal to get him over to Antonio's as soon as he could. If he was to keep thinking about fucking his brother, then he was cursed; if he tried to suppress that 'truth' to becoming the lie that it obviously and surely was, then he was just an unfortunate man with troubles of his own that needed to be sorted out right away. Feliciano probably did not even remember a thing about what happened, since it all happened in a mental lapse in Lovino's mind. It takes two to make a couple after all, and if the only thing that happened between them was entirely fictional, then there was nothing more to say. _Once I talk with Antonio, I'll go right home and talk with Feliciano. Obviously, obviously, obviously, he won't remember a single thing about that which did not happen._ A devilishly clever grin overgrew him as he felt empowered against this bristle taboo. _It's a date._

He nearly crashed the car with his shocked reaction to his perverted imposition of a simple talk with his brother being a 'date'. "I need to get a hold of myself! He's my brother!" The defendant, the Lovino that did the dirty deed, did not dare speak; he was still asleep on the bed, feeling his breath synchronized with his brother's as they held each other's naked form to the other as closely as they could. The _real_ Lovino could not be bothered with him and his sick imagination, for he was already occupied in disproving the validity and actuality of the fake's memory of that which had been spawned in passing by driving miles in each and every direction, only to find that the real answer was somewhere else. Mr. Braginski obviously meant to point him in this direction, to Antonio's house to get his confirmation of innocence. _What a strange man, pointing me to somewhere else to answer a question that he could have just answered then and there. Thank goodness that I'm a sharp learner and caught on to that sneaky little riddle._ A mad man's confident grin took him over, and he proceeded back on the road again.


	7. Chapter 7

The previous flux of emotions from before, whereas he practically declared the entirety of time and space a falsehood and a singularity where everything was a non-conformist image of 'normal' did not last beyond the three-minute mark. Even then, as he drove away from the visages of Francis' properties, which lay right next to both to his and Feliciano's home and the Meeting Hall, he began to have second thoughts about his second thoughts of his second thoughts. He was second-guessing his second-guessing, and his eyes growing drowsy once more with fatigue as the nap was no longer withstanding. _I've been on the road, what, three times today? Four times? What the hell is wrong with me?_ Lovino looked towards the horizon to see his adopted fathers' house, placed prominently by the beach where it oversaw all newcomers that passed his French neighbor's lot. The house itself was nothing special; a standard homing unit that was made of standardized walls, windows, and so on. It was shaped just like all the other houses in Europa, except Antonio gave it his own special aesthetic touches that contrasted with all the others. They were too many to count yet the most prominent ones were the inclusion of wooden crosses over the head of most of the doorways in the home. There used to be one over every doorway, in and out and all the rest from the basement to the bathroom, but soon those disappeared over time.

Lovino's head dropped in sudden contemplation on the crosses for no reason apparent to him, and he began to wonder as to why the crosses that held dominance over every room's port began to disappear. As far as he could remember, to the parts of his childhood that he could recall with at least _some_ clarity, Antonio never gave a reason as to why he took one down or put one back up again. Even when he was wearing that demeaning outfit that Antonio said made him 'a real Spanish pride', whatever the hell that meant, he still did not tell. What an embarrassment: go to all the trouble of wearing a long-sleeved blouse and breeches of all things, just to be given a passive shrug of definite-faux ignorance. _I got so mad that day, didn't I?_ Lovino could not help it as he grinned with nostalgia. Once again, the thoughts stopped plaguing him as he tuned out the rapid descents of emotional waves. Happy, sad, fearful, annoyed, normal, strange, he was simply bouncing all over the place! That goddamn dream of him and his brother was more trouble than it was worth!

And thus, he nearly wrecked the outside of his adopted father's house when he just missed crashing into it with the car. Thank goodness for the reliability of Italian cars! Lovino had slammed the breaks when he first realized that the terrain had turned from normal, long-stretches of trees and occasional grassland to entirely grass-land and the once-occurring sight of Antonio's mailbox. When he looked up to investigate as to why barely four seconds before he had seen that box, the fastly approaching image of a brown garage door surprised him completely. When the dust from the halted tires finally settled, Lovino's shaking hands managed to open the door and let him out of the driver's door. Well, letting his _feet_ out is more like it; _That was scary as hell!_ He gave a small shudder as to how close he was to causing an icing-on-top-of-the-cake situation by slamming his car into Antonio's home. First he imagined fucking his brother out-right to the point that he even imagined that they were sleeping in the same bed that morning, he went all across town and even to its outskirts to visit some kind of corporate conglomerate only to find out it _was_a dream, if not from some sort of drunken haphazard, and now he was just about to cause property damage to his parental-figure's home? What a catastrophe this all was!

However, Antonio was laughing at the inheritably goofy actions of his adopted son. "Oh, Lovino, now I know you're getting along well with Feliciano!" The South Italian's heart skipped a beat at the name he did not exactly want to hear at the moment, especially now the memory of _that_ came back. It was not what he thought it was, for the green-eyed Spaniard continued, "You're acting just as ditzy as Ludwig used to tell me that Feliciano used to act like back when you two were living away from one another!" _Cocky asshole of a parent; comparing me to him, and even bringing up that Potato Bastard's name?_ A warm yet sly grin broke over Antonio's face in seeming examination of the red Lamborghini's owner that sat perpendicular of the car's general orientation. "Did you, or did you not create those sort of instant-stop features for your brother?"

_Ah, yes, mention him _more_ why don't you?_ But then again, it was humourously true: when Lovino first designed the car about two months after moving in with his brother under one roof on Mediterranean Lane, he had long heard by then of his brother's terrible driving skills. Kiku and Ludwig looked to him with shock and dismay when he had first asked them how his brother's handle of their auto-mobiles were, and warned him never to let the North Italian ever behind the wheel. He once did. However, those scars and frights were of the past. Feliciano was no longer allowed behind the wheel, under penalty of the denial of siestas, and thus the roads were safe once again. Still, it _was_ funny to see some of Roderich's little topiaries explode like they did from the sheer force of their car tearing-rubber across his lawn; perhaps he should let his brother behind the wheel just one more time, if the ultimate revenge for a grievous insult is needed?

Both men walked into the house with good spirits, and Antonio set a light to the oven-top. There, he placed all the needings for some coffee and milk, and served it as such. "Café con leche, si?" he asked in Spanish.

To counter the clever jab, Lovino answered with "Non; Caffè e latte." _Same thing, really._

After the first two sips or so out of the pristine, wooden cups, Antonio placed his down and folded his hands together. "So, I saw you at the Meeting." He gave a vocal and emotional impression that he did not expect Lovino to go to it at all. Oh, how right he was and how well he knew his son. "What in the world made you want to actually go down there?"

He gave a generic shrug to half-answer it for a lazy oral-response. "I was bored, so I decided to come visit the morons that float all around the god-damn town. It can't be bothered, you know?" Lovino ducked his head back down, slouching to drink from the considerable cup. When he lifted once more, "Well, if you _saw_me there, you must know that it was so boring that I took a god-damn nap. It was exhausting, listening to you wind-bags go on and on and on about shit that doesn't matter at all."

The Spaniard laughed a little, giving his companion a nudge on the shoulder. "Oh, and you think that everything that goes on in the town, all the repairs and stuff just happens like magic?"

And a comical shrug of the head, Lovino admitted playfully "Sure; I mean, how else can anything happen if that Austrian pansy won't shut his mouth?"

To this, Antonio had to let loose a roar of applauding laughter. Lovino always knew that, despite how everyone reacted to his own heckles, that Roderich was a definite local punching bag. The moron kept dancing around as if he were bigger than he actually was; yet his home property was almost as small as his frugal, quiet-yet-rough-going neighbour Bash Zwingli. What a walking joker he was! When Antonio calmed himself a little, with the laughs remains still bursting within his throat, he gave a little admission. "I guess when you're right, you're right, Little Lovi."

This flustered the Southern Italian to no end. Using that cutesy name that he used for him when he was a little kid? By daft, good sir, you must be insane! With a childish blush of embarrassment, Lovino rubbed his feet on the floor in protest. "That's not fair, Boss. I'm an adult, just like you; stop treating me like a little kid." _He always does this when he wants to get a little rise out of me!_ A sigh. _And it works every time._

"You are? When did this happen, if I may ask?" Antonio crossed his legs while he laid back in the wooden chair, a smug look upon his face with pride. "Then why did you just call me 'Boss', again? Back when you were little, you used to call me that all the time when you wanted to play. Are you trying to suggest that even as an adult, your dad is still the boss of you?"

_God damn him and his easy-going ways._ "No, not at all. Now shut up before you get a splash of coffee to match your stupid hair." An embarrassed sip of his drink as his conversationalist rival chortled at such a failure of a response. It took several small kicks under the table and the smooth therapy of the drink with dairy to calm Antonio down once more, being the emotional rider that he was. They let the moment be what it was for just a little bit before settling back into their seats. Without warning or even a quip to suggest it's beginning, an inquiry rose through Lovino from deep in his diaphragm and up to his mouth where it broke free to the world. "What makes one a man?"

A surprising inquisition presented to the Spaniard, that was for sure. He searched his mind as best as he could before responding, mulling on the notion of the birth of manliness within an individual. A hand raised to pace himself as he began to articulate, "What makes a man a man is that he's always brave, even in the fact of overwhelming odds. He won't back down even if the whole world is against him, yet he'll know when and where to choose his battles." Cough, a small racking of his throat as he began to venture into unmarked territory. "And he also knows that every decision he makes from the heart, when it is fused with the mind, is the most righteous. Even with that of the issue of love."

"Love? How would a man, a _real_ man, define something as love?"

"Well, there is a moment where you're uncertain as to what you're feeling." Antonio leaned back in the chair and stared towards the standardized, beige ceiling. "Perhaps it's nothing more than an inkling, or you want to say something to her. You feel as if there's nothing that could happen between the both of you in one moment. Then, in the next moment at any time, all you want to think about is _her. _ Your lives become intertwined by the touch of your skin against each other's, if it was all with consent. When you become one in the same, in hence, the same person even for one second, that is when you become a man." Antonio leaned forward with small suspicion, whispering. "I've told you things like this before. Are you trying to tell me that you've actually met someone?"

Lovino's face was drawing blank from beginning to end, then cracked open into embarrassment. "No, no, not at all! I was just wondering, is all!" There was nothing to his thoughts except flustered emotional response. Once again, his conventional thoughts that were imprinted by birth were being dismantled bit by bit, and now by the very man that _taught him those values_! There was no way that this could be happening!

His left eyebrow rose with suspicion as he gave a concerned question, "Are you sure? Ever since you got here, it's been as if you were somewhere else entirely. You keep looking off into the distance, but you never look as far as the room we're in." He placed his right hand upon Lovino's left shoulder and gave him a firm hold. "Are you absolutely sure, Lovi?"

The Southern Italian looked down slightly at his cup, watching his left index finger slowly stir the coffee with the now-dissipated milk. "I," a small whisper, barely even a mumble. "I don't know. It felt like a dream. Like a fairy-tale being played over and over again, like as if it was something more than it was." He shuffled in his seat and listened to the creaks of his moved weight happen thrice. "It must have been a dream. It was too weird to have been real; absolutely, positively."

To this, all Antonio gave was a little growl of encouragement in a friendly manner. "Lovino, you dog. I knew I learned you well." A little shrug of his shoulders in a show of merriment and jolly, "Well, I have to admit, Lovi, I never thought you actually _listened_ me when I told you about that sort of stuff when you were a kid- "

There are no hands in the world that could have gone up as fast has his. Lovino kept shaking his head over and over, practically rocking in the chair as he did so. To compliment his repetition of negatories, the creaks that he managed before were no longer in a sequence of three but a hurricane of more. "It's nothing like that, nothing like that at all! It was just a dream that felt like it was real life, believe me!"

"Listen, Lovi, I won't judge. You're a growing boy and it's only natural for you to have wanted it _so badly_ that you'd find a girl you would like so soon. Honest for truly, don't be so bashful."

_Girl? He hasn't caught on to me yet?_ He gave a heavy sigh of relief; even if it were a small respite it was still a way out of here. _I have to get out._ Lovino rose from his chair and looked to the door, seeing that the light that once beckoned from there was now muted. Once again, he was on the move. Like how the meeting ended with Mr. Braginski before Antonio, he was on the move. There was nothing left for him here, so now he had to leave before he heard something he did not like. And boy, oh boy, he did not like this. "I have to go, sorry." The chair's legs scraped against the floor as he moved away, thus deafening his adopted father's protests.

When the sounds that were be of no concern were no longer available to be an ample shield for Lovino, he had to listen to Antonio two metres behind him as he looked to the door, half a metre to his front. All the Spaniard could see was the white back of Lovino's shirt, the green of his pants and the brown of his hair. "What's wrong, Lovi?"

Infinite silence ended, as there was a rumble in the distance. He gave a clear-cut response this time, feeling braver now that he did not have to face him. "How would a man handle this? Running away from what he did, going all around the fucking town to run away from what he did? Even if he didn't mean for it to happen?"

With a few breaths, Antonio spoke back as carefully as he could. "Well, it wouldn't be much of a matter of what a man would do, but what a human _being_ would do. If you want to know how to be strong right now, then you should go to the person that you think you've wronged. You should go to them and apologize, even if they have absolutely no idea how you wronged them. There's nothing to be afraid of, except simply asking for forgiveness and trying to accept their love as you would." He held up his hands slightly towards Lovino. "That's what anyone would do if they're in as much trouble as you think you're in. But believe me, you're not in trouble. As long as I'm here, Lovi, you should never think you're in trouble."

The skies flashed and drops began to form rapidly upon the window of the front door. While the darkness called to him to act upon the advice that he knew he could trust in most, he could not stop wondering as to how to go about it. His adopted father may have been a nice guy, with all the right intentions in mind for not only himself but for everyone around him, he had still taught him everything he knew that was shattered on that night. Now, he was acting under the assumption that this was merely a howdy-do event, that it was merely overreacting to the kiss of a sweet woman, _but it was not_! It killed him on the inside to be like this, to be so indecisive and so cowardly as to not even tell his father what had happened. So, he had his eyes focused upon the door, and he gave one last lie. "I understand." The embrace of the rain was more than godsend to his muscles as he took his time to get back to the car door. He didn't even turn around to see if Antonio was there to see him slump; it would've been unbearable if he were.

* * *

The drive back was a cautious one. Through his desperate ventures throughout the town, from east to west and all over once again, his car was about to become very acquainted with the term 'running on empty'. It would be fitting, for the car's driver was going through the same thing as it was: pushing as fast as it could to get to that one place it needed to be, regardless of combustions biological or mechanical. The lights illuminated the way through the darkness of the raining night, the full brunt of the clouds that came from the East now fully engulfing the world in the West. However, Lovino kept on moving. Even when he had to take a detour by a singular point near the Rhine Way, he kept on moving. It was a precarious journey to have gone so far into the German-owned plot of land, but Lovino braved through it at full gallop. Hell, he did not even take time to slow down to make anything more of a gesture to a brown car simply sitting in the torrent. Its lights were on while it stayed stationary in direction to a boarded-up building that reeked of condemnation, with not a stir inside the car to note. He kept on driving until his car's warning system went off over the apparent lack of fuel approaching as close as the car itself was growing closer to the house. There, he closed the door of the car and locked it as fast as he could and sped himself to the front door. Inside, Lovino could clearly make out the waiting appearance of his brother simply sitting upon the couch. However, he would not be alone for long.

When the door opened with almost a clack of the doorknob against the wall, Feliciano gave a start and looked into the storm that was just opened into the home. The face was familiar, but the anxiety that had it stricken was not. "Fratello? Why're you standing out there in the rain?" The Northern Italian stood up from the couch to approach his brother as he said those words, giving no heed to the fact that he was approaching a very troubled person. "Where have you been?"

Neither Feliciano or Lovino were prepared for what Lovino did next: he wrapped his soaking arms directly around Feliciano and held him in a close embrace. He was the one doing this, but he didn't understand why he was doing it at all. It just felt right to do it, as if the advice Antonio gave was somehow universal even for such a messed-up situation like his. Tears began to well up in his eyes, but he tried to pretend they were just steady streams of rain coming down from his hair and rebellious ahoge while his head rested in parallel to his brother's, His throat hiccupped in protest, sobs being held down for dear life as Lovino held his burden close and his brother closer. Lovino managed to whisper just one thing, over and over through the broken sobs, "I'm sorry."

Confusion grew upon Feliciano's face as he asked "For what?" to every one, but he did not get his answer. They stood there for the longest time, near the crack of the evening, holding in a wet-to-dry embrace of acquiescence and continued desire for forgiveness.


	8. Chapter 8

The rain blathered and wiped down the windows with its torrential persistence, causing a river of water that had fallen from the heavens to become one with the Earth. From the exterior to the inside of the Italian home, a natural refraction of the air's light rays produced a sort of bluish tint onto the bed-sheets, a foot or so of the rug-covered floor, and the separated bodies of the Vargas brothers sleeping in the single bed. The stronger brother had broken down to his free-spirited twin, crying his eyes out for reasons he had not been able to name. He had traveled across the entire town for nothing at all and left Feliciano all by himself for something that obliterated itself in a civil war of flooding emotions with a hug with him. Now, he lay nearly quarter-a-metre from his polar-opposite, both of them as naked as any siesta or night they had had before this chaotic last few days. _I cannot move a single inch of my body; _a small whisper broke through his mind while his eyes kept shifting over to the turned-over back of Feliciano. Lovino had just started to notice this paralyzation when his consciousness subtly recommended a shifting of weight to the farthest side the bed. However, no matter how he demanded his body to budge one way or the other, the muscles that were laced around his strong-bones refused to respond. He would begin to think that this was some sort of horrible nightmare that he would be trapped in this bed next to his naked brother forever, looking up to the ceiling that was painted black and blue, and the occasional instantaneous wisps of deafening white. What a terrifying, unimaginable, overwhelmingly malevolent thought that, in all honesty was not scaring him as much as it should.

What _scared_ him was that as he lay with the blanket nearly hanging off his stomach, he heard his bed-sharer whisper to him. "Fratello, I have to ask you a question." The pull from the right-side of the bed on the blanket grew tighter and closer. The normally placid Italian took a small breath of air to relax, and then continued on. "Why did you leave me? When I woke up I was expecting you to still _be_ there with me; but you were gone, and you didn't even tell me why." Feliciano's voice began to crack, becoming farther away as he seemed to curl up even further into a beetle-position of fealty. "Please tell me if I did something wrong. I- I didn't mean to hurt you, if that's what's wrong." Small trails of tears began to form upon his cheeks, rolling down to their puddled demise on the bed-sheets.

Lovino's heart was breaking into two when he heard his brother's small, choked-up weeping. It was not out of pity, but of sympathy that he felt for him; he should not have gone out this morning for no reason other than to delude himself of the reality of the situation. _Horse-shit to whatever excuse I made up,_ his thoughts reprimanded sternly, _He's my god-damn brother! I should _be_ there for him!_ His head flopped to the left, and he allowed himself to examine his bed-mate not from the point of view of how other people would want to view this, but from his own point of view. That myriad of jumbled thoughts of an inner mental revolution that had happened the night they went out for dinner on that certain date-in-time suddenly returned to him, allowing for a recalculation of where exactly he was supposed to go with his life. _Feliciano and I have always lived off of little jobs here and there, or mostly off of Antonio's charity. We always listen to him, and he tells us to listen to everyone else. I'd hate to say it, but even with all my bitching and moaning about this crappy town I still follow what everyone says._ Oh, what a feeling of disgusting regret he felt right now! He always stated that he followed no other man's path, only his own, ever since he first formulated the first 'Mafia' game with his adopted dad back over yonder time. However, now, he was faced with a bitter truth that has haunted his night-frights from that specific childhood until now: he has almost never done what he really wanted. Lovino always fell into line eventually, doing what he was told and how to do it without really following up with his own emotions or his own logic. Hell, does he even _have_ those? Every single thought, action, spoken word, or so on has always been influenced by either his father or those whom forebear him. _Now, it's my turn. It's time for me to do what _I_ want, and get what _I_ want!_ The thought was a brilliant declaration from a man who had only recently broken the chains of servitude, if ever so slightly, and now was on the verge of personal triumph. However, there was a small question to that even within itself: _What do I want?_ Here lies Lovino Vargas, rushing into an obscure concept of freedom for himself after being ruled by the rules and regular-norms of other people. Now, he looked to be liberated by not only himself, but also with his _brother_ of all people. For the love of God, he must stop those tears from falling right now! "I'm not angry, Feliciano. Why would you think that you would ever hurt me, even by accident?"

A small sniffle combined with a pitifully tearful whimper is the ultimate knockout punch to anyone's heart, even to a heart as steel-bolted as Lovino's. "You're, you're not angry with me? Even though we did…_ that_?" The North Italian's side of the bed seemed to shift in weight distribution, and a lollygag of moving sheets.

Lovino turned over on his own side to meet the slightly watered face of his brother. "What do you mean by that? Do you think that something like _that_ could stop me from being your brother?" He managed to raise his hand to the limp and emotionally, physically infirm one of Feliciano's and slowly trace his fingers from the wrist to the spaces between his fingers. They were so close to coming together in a strong-handed embrace of their fingers, but he dared not to seal the vacuum between. Instead, he forced his hand against the undeniable force of gravity and willed it to merely hover despite the natural attraction. "Look at me, fratello." One inch gave way for his head to an inclination to his brother's. "I will never, _ever_ stop being your brother, do you understand me? There will never be a time, or place, where you will stop being my brother."

Tears? How could there be _more_ of these damning crystals of his brother's eyes to crush his resolve? Oh, where did those despicable, undermining miniature globes of diamond come from, and how could he possibly negotiate their acquiescence? Feliciano did not seem to be on that sort of mind-set; rather, the weeper was no longer one of sorrow, but of birthing gratitude. "Really?" The North Italian received a carefully timed nod, which was only visible within the small moonlight. In response to his just deserts, he practically launched his body onto his brother's with complete disregard for his embracee's clandestine attempts of keeping space between them.

With one man's skin feeling the other, the other felt the others in return. It was a never-ending wave of peripheral and pleasurable emotion as Feliciano hugged his scrawny and dainty body to his elder brother's slightly more muscular one. The utter surprise of the attack took the Southern Italian completely off-guard, almost causing his heart to stop altogether and send him into shock. Lovino could not get a single muscle to respond to his mind's commands to try and peel his naked bedmate off of his own naked body. Surely, it could not be a matter of strength; Lovino had always done the grudge work of his father or his various chores all by himself, while his brother merely grew into his own sort of meekness that gave him some tone, but by far not enough to restrain him like this! "F-Feli-ciano," he managed to gasp from his throat as his _own_ hands brought themselves down upon his brother's lower back as his arms were braced under Feliciano's. Were his own hands in open treason? Back off from there, that is by far a restricted territory! A man's body is his temple, and _that_ area was a pious one of Feliciano's!

The response from the caretaker of that temple was not one of confusion or anger, but of laughter and amuse. "Oh, _fratello_, that tickles!" His legs began to squirm from the unfamiliar movements of Lovino's hands upon his back, and soon almost every single inch of each other's fronts were touching their respective counter-part. Well, their legs, feet and _other_ areas were obliged to remain kosher. Just as a face of discomfort grew upon his brother, Feliciano began to separate by his own will from that fuzzy, intimate embrace of Italian skins. "I, I know that you're afraid of everyone, Lovino. But that's what makes you so cool, you know! You take on anyone who makes you mad and make _them_ afraid of you! If there was anything I couldn't do, you could figure it out in no time at all."

_Why in the hell is his face getting so red?_

With a small stutter, the North Italian completed severed their contact. "Well, I also know how you don't _like_ to be hugged like that." His eyes looked down to his left towards the bed, and gave a belittled recognition of the death of his endeavours. "Don't worry like you did today, tomorrow's another day. Buona notte." Feliciano proceeded to slowly crawl back onto his side of the bed. All in all, with that simple incursion to his brother's private person, Feliciano can no doubt claim that it was an over-all success. However, it was also a complete _embarrassment_! He had just come into such a commanding presence over his stronger brother, and all he could do was prattle on about nonsense like 'knowing' him! Feliciano tried to bury one of his blushed cheeks into the pillow and let that moment alone.

However, the unexpected came to reward his brash actions: a shuffle of sheets and the placement of Lovino's right arm upon Feliciano's right hip. "Buona notte, mio fratello."

They slept soundly for the rest of the night, with Lovino reaching from across his side of the bed to his brother's side. It was an abrupt peace, but with the implications of such to be discussed at a later time seemed favourable to not only Feliciano, but the wary Lovino whom sought not just a little freedom for himself to find out where he stood on this, but also to protect his brother from any harm or undo emotional foul. Everything was secondary to that primary goal, with no exceptions in the matter. It wasn't even up for debate.


	9. Chapter 9

Dawn broke upon the land, and for once in what seemed to be eternity it seemed to be one of casual endeavour rather than mental distraught or some new form of ideological stalemate ripping his mind apart for Lovino. Don't take this the wrong way; his life had been perfectly content in the past, with long fields of flowers and daisies and that kind of 'mushy crap'. However, that weird day just before had driven on and on to what seemed to compare to centuries. _Sleep is just what I needed!_ This was a definite thought that jogged his body to full-force, his brain's receptors whirring to life and his eyes blinking away what seemed to be crust of forgotten tears. He gave no notice to these out-of place pieces of muck that wanted to refuse him the scenery of the world; they were below his notice outside of being pests.

When Lovino rose from the bed to find some clothes for his rather naked form, he did not give a second thought to why Feliciano was as equally naked, being barely an inch from his own body in any given direction from whence he had laid himself down in slumber. It just registered one thought, and one thought alone: _I hope I don't wake him._ To this end, he gave the door a quick tug to close behind him as he took his now-pants'd self out of the bedroom. He even flinched when the door began to squeak, but he dared not to look back if only in a fear of awakening his brother.

* * *

Breakfast was prepared in a jiffy. It was so fast to prepare that he did not even realize what he was even making while forming it with his own two hands. Those little details seemed lost to the spectrum that he now resided upon; who knew sleep was _this good_? Oh, how he could not wait to return to that succulent bed that was new by only a quarter week's time! _Perhaps that rain helped?_ He looked out the window and saw that while dawn broke before with many clouds celebrating their accomplishment in the air, it had become more than evident that they were leaving a rather jubilant party. Lovino sighed in remorse for the disappearance of this factor; but still, only the end of the day would prove to be the vindication of his hopes for another good night of sleep. Come forth, you crawling hours of the day! Sooner rather than later, he will be back upon that bed to blast away any doubts of his continued comforted slumber-

The sudden appearance of Feliciano's curiosity-filled face at Lovino's side caused him to practically implode with surprise. However, the recently and apparently unforeseen awakened one gave no note to his brother's surprise. "What's for breakfast?" The Southern Italian could have sworn that his brother said one of his non-officially trademarked quirk of 'Ve' immediately under his breath, and under the presence of his right-hand in the front of his mouth.

Lovino recovered quite easily with a raise of his left eyebrow in faked calm scrutiny. "Nothing special, mio fratello. It's the same-old, same-old." He began to try and bury himself back within their awaiting breakfast for no specific reason whatsoever.

For some reason, the next action taken by Feliciano was a peculiar one: by normal circumstances, the Northern Italian brother would instead just fade off from the conversation in some happy outlandish thought that would be portrayed by an atypical face of contentment while waiting patiently for the no-doubt appetizing meal. However, at the moment, Feliciano continued to hover with a look that reeked of simplistic perplexity. The look itself was albeit a bit strange, but the way that his brother delivered it was simply too much for Lovino to take without it being exclusive of his notice. It was a sort of worried curiosity that analyzed every movement of his hands amongst the cooking materials. Then, in a small mutter, "Do you want to keep on cooking, or should I do the cooking for you?"

At first he chose to ignore him as if he were still tired, but the obviously bizarre connotations simply overwhelmed his ability to do so. Firstly, with a thought of _Wait, what?_, and then a moment to gather himself to respond. Lovino looked with apprehension into his brother's normally whimsical ones, all four of them being auburn pools of Italian sincerity. However, the Southern Italian brother declined his head to say, "No, I'll cook it myself." His lightly haired eyebrow twitched in an effort to try and fathom a position to assume for his furtherly-now whispered inquiry. "Why in the world would you even ask? I thought we agreed that I'd do regular meals, and if there were ever a special occasion _you_ would do the cooking, then you would do it," With his left hand he lifted a small piece of bread to take a small bite to punctuate his meaning.

There was a lowered head in recognition of real hegemony over the kitchen, and Feliciano tracked himself over to the table.

Lovino let be and let be and thus allowed for that moment to pass him by with a fair warning of security. Breakfast continued without a hitch after that weird episode with both brothers munching their bread with jam in peace.

* * *

Even though it is a house not even a stone's-throw from the beach, it resided on the proud statement that it was a house of _rules_. If there ever was a system of laws and whatnot to govern a single area, Lovino and Feliciano made sure that their methods were supreme in terms of applicability and fairness for both members of a household. Back when the Vargas brothers were finally brought together after years of interregnum there was a small meeting between Antonio, whom was and still is the guardian of Lovino, and Ludwig whom was the de facto guardian of Feliciano, being the far more mature of the triad of friends he and Feliciano were composed of with Kiku Honda. Initially, Antonio and Ludwig were on the assumption that neither of the Italians would be able to properly interact outside of the Northern Italian's strongly-urged letters for reunification; Ludwig was supposedly far too busy to pay more mind to the events but still placed himself on standby to assist in the proceedings as a professional, while Antonio bid his son a good-day's luck in the reunification. Despite these doubts and urgings by their more competent fellows, the Vargas brothers actually managed to compose a well-organized reunion despite only acknowledging each other through parchment-letters only. Lovino and Feliciano pooled their amassed, albeit small resources together and managed to buy a quaint house for each other to live in right by Mediterranean Lane and thus began a series of reassignment of household duties. The brothers were not lost on the fact that each of them were different in skill and prior experience in managing their own lives, so they decided to cut it down a thin line: Lovino would handle most of the grudge work in the home which includes cooking and physically-tasking chores, while Feliciano would maintain a solid social relationship with the rest of the town by going to meetings, parties, and so on. Sure, it may seem hefty to the Southern's side of the table, but at the time he had a surely attitude that he was the one out of the duo whom was mature enough to do what had to be done. After these past few years of living together, Lovino had come to regret his overtly immature attitude that seemed to try to over-press his brother's best wishes. _I was such an ass._

Even though their roles were sort of chauvinist for the physically orientated of the two, it was still a workable system for both of them. Oh, how glorious it is to be in such a close synch as a family reunited! If anything were to peer over the horizon to threaten this easily accessible system, it would be an absolute spot upon the face of convenient paradise.

That spot arrived to blot the already awkward day when Feliciano, out of complete and utter no-where just like the actions before breakfast, decided to take out his thinner aqua-coloured coat from the closet. Alarmed, Lovino inquired as to why he wasn't back on the couch watching their stories. To this he responded, "I'm just going to the library, fratello; I'll only be gone for a few hours."

"The _library_?" It was as if his brother was speaking in tongues! He tried to cut him off at the door, taking a hold of his brother's now-coated left arm as he walked to the door that was to the right of their den. "What in the world would you need in a library, Feliciano? We've got plenty of books here, so you don't have to go out there." Inside of the South Italian's eyes was a torrent of uncertainty that sought to ascertain the exact reason why his brother was seeking a leave from the house. "You should stay in here instead of trying to go out there, to go so far; trust me, there's absolutely no reason for you to go through that shit-land out there."

However, there was no reasoning this abrupt expedition to the outside for him. Out of the way, inside of his mind, he was trying to find an unknown thing that was perched on the top of his tongue. Back in the old days, Ludwig always traveled far away to that off-and-out building over-yonder and came back with entire arm-full loads of books with big words that he seemed to always know what they actually meant. Feliciano looked and looked at those books when he still roomed up with his friends, but they were like gibberish to him. So, now that he was a grown adult and in his own home and out on his own, he now has his own inquiry that can only lead to one conclusion: do what Ludwig did and go find the library. He gave a small smile of assurance and said, "Don't worry about me. There's just something I need to know about, and I just know it'll be in the library! I heard about it a long time ago and I tried my best to _be_ like it, but I just can't remember what it was." Feliciano eased his brother's worried grip off his arm in delicate remiss. "It'll all be better when I get a book, Lovino; it always worked when Ludwig was around."

And thus the sense of urgency was killed with that very name finally spoken in even the slightest friendliness. Lovino turned back in a humph and sat himself down on the couch again. "That potato-loving bastard likes books, eh? Well, go get as many of those _books_ as you like. Just get back here before you hurt someone with the car."

Imaginary glitter of joyful unbelievability filled the atmosphere. "You mean it? I can actually go driving in the car?"

"Yeah, yeah, see if I care."

The Northern Italian gave a little leap off the floor in celebration and practically danced some sort of spasm with a smile of shimmering gold. "Thank you, thank you, _thank you_!" He left the house and his pouting but still wonderful brother behind. Their car roared to life like a wild tiger with a new mission in life. It was a mechanical beast that prepped its treaded claws upon the finely placed asphalt that it called its jungle-floor. With a little effort of his foot, the Feliciano-effort as it is called as a curse from hell for any other automobilist whom encountered him. It is called a curse, a plague that threatens any and all whom trail the roads of Europa, for it is a simple fact: _the speeds he drives at are insane._ While it may seem that the free-spirited man may be simply a child laughing his head off in glee on the road-pike at over a hundred miles-per-hour, he is actually putting little to no effort into speeding, turning, yielding, braking, swerving, and so on. The car is his enabling whore, and Feliciano is no doubt addicted to the speed that she provides him.

Together, he and his fuel-guzzling mistress inflamed their spark plugs of life and sped off into the distance. Unbeknownst to them, almost ten minutes in their wake of their grand galloping away, the wary form of Lovino walked himself out of the silent innards of his house and placed a nicely-woven easy-chair with a nice magenta cushion right behind the white-fence that extended from the walk-way to the outside on the patio to the wall. For the next oblivion-forever it seems to be, Lovino simply stared off into the distance while fidgeting in place. Sure, there were no singular way for him to sit; yet even so as his legs and arms found new places to settle themselves, his eyes remained steadfast to the horizon. Not a single thought emerged as to _why_ he was doing this, yet it helped make him feel more at home when his gaze swept the world away to that non-existent visage of the car on black roads amongst the green of the earth.

* * *

The trips his German friend had taken years ago were far off and took upwards of five hours to complete. Feliciano took only three to reach the precipice of two worlds: the pan-suburban-rural areas of Europa that all centered into idealistic fault-points of differing life histories versus the panoramic and multi-climated areas of Asiakota with spaces of different worlds across the land. However, as Feliciano was exiting the Bosphorus Highway where he obliged the speed-laws for once to slow down in Sadik Adnan's school-lanes, he left the comforts of long stretches of occasionally forested plains and entered rocky highlands that gave way to just endless hills of patched-grasses gasping for life from the choke-hold of sands, dirt and sun. The world was parched here of all that there was to be proud of, such as a large and strong tree, and replaced itself with the shadows of rocks that made their way up to the stars as if the idea that death from the vacuum of space would be preferable to the western part of Asiakota at this time of year. Even with the air-conditioning on at full blast Feliciano could only just stand the waves of power cooking this part of the landscape to the core-temperature of Hell. The comparison may be crude, but Feliciano made something similar inside his own mind while the sweat glistened upon-yonder thin eyebrows and slightly-exposed forehead.

However, he was not technically going out into this desert blind: instead, he was relying on a small map that Lovino stuffed into their almost-as-small shelf full of books. It was old and ragged, but it was still as legible as any other the town had as it sat on the sun-stained dashboard. Feliciano was pleased about how well he was driving, managing to stay on that yellow line for the entire time without having to go into one of those pesky and utterly useless lanes. When he arrived at the Pahlavi Library, he saw that it was nestled amongst a dune the size of a mountain. The outside of the seemingly ancient building left little to the imagination with its simplistic design resembling a twenty-story stone-built tube of air-spray. It was not the design that struck him, rather, it was the gyrations and yells from a shoddily-dressed man with broken framed glasses adorning his tan-skinned head. Feliciano ducked a far-flung away attack that never came into reality, seeming to prefer cowering under his hands than to stand to see who was beckoning him with such fury.

With the closing distance between them, the stranger's words finally became real ones instead of barks and yowls of protest. "Who are you, you strange person? What business do you have here?" Upon the person's head was some sort of scarf or something; Feliciano had never seen anything quite like it and its mixed-patch colours of red and white. Once the man was barely a metre away and still roaring, he removed a book from the bounds of his raggedy clothing and seemed prepared to smack the innocent Italian for some unspoken crime.

"Please don't hurt me!" Stammered Feliciano, whom hid within his clothes as he shuddered in fear, "I just wanna book, please! I really need it!"

This seemed to hold the sandy-attacker in place, now looking over the cowering man he thought as an enemy. "You are here for a book, you say?" He looked upwards and downwards upon the European clothing that were loose and fashion-designed, but not in the least-bit designed for the territory they were present in. When he received a gentle nod from Feliciano, the man returned the large book to his robes as if he were hiding a dagger. "If you really _need_ a book, then you must follow _my_ rules; do you understand, foreigner?"

Another nod.

This seemed to thrill the tanned-man, whom began immediately to spout the mentioned rules while listing them on his callused right-hand's fingers. "Firstly, you will respect my authority at any and all costs. Secondly, you will not attempt to steal a single piece of literature or item from my building at any and all costs. Thirdly, you will respect the building as you would respect me at any and all costs, no matter the cost. Fourthly and most importantly, you will return the book if you are not seeking to take it out or buy it from the premises. If not, you will be fined at any and all costs and I will proceed to beat your lights out with my book." Requiring a real breath instead of just the small ones he was taking in between the hurried summary of the rules, the man seemed to be taking more heat to the head from the listing rather than from the sun above. Despite this lack of breath, he actually managed to lower his voice to connotate his threat. "Do you understand?"

Too much of a coward to refuse or even protest, the North Italian gave a few quick nods of his head to show he knew the laws-and-punishments. When his librarian-apparent turned to re-enter the ancient building, Feliciano allowed a few metres of space to form between them, if only to get a head-start's run if the man changed his mind once more. The large, hardened wood doors creaked upon as if they were the foremost forgotten gates of hell, revealing behind them a spectacle to behold: rows upon rows of humongous shelves, almost resembling leviathan monoliths that were made for gods amongst men to sort the world's words within a confined space or area. In spite of his previously overwhelming fear of undeserved pain, the stranger to this land now found himself humbled by not only the daring environment that this single man lived in, but also by the proud duty he had in watching over such a beautiful building's literary works of the world.

Feliciano made his way down a wide-open, non-specific aisle of twin shelves that led to the middle point of the entire building to see that the design was replicated all over: the book-shelves of the other parts of the building all stretched towards the middle, even if they were on the second floor or the sixteenth floor. At the bottom-floor, he looked up towards an unexpected-placement of a sky-dome that let the sun's rays illuminate the floors below, as well as letting the ground floor's floor be decorated by sky-beams that were in the form of a roulette of five large circles. From within the building, the foreigner's clothing seemed to be out-of-place with his moderately short sleeved blue shirt and his long-legged brown pants, all speaking of complacency within the cultural values of lands more western than the browns, tans and yellows of this part of Asiakota.

Despite the contrasts he made more simplistically within his mind of _Wow, this is all so different than back home!_ and the perfectly observable beauty of the building's architecture, Feliciano suddenly realized that he had absolutely no clue as to where to find anything in his own language. One book that he pulled out from a parallel shelf from the aisle whence he entered the monolith was in some form of 'scribble', which was the only word that the child-at-heart could describe the scratchings he could make out. In the shelf opposite to the one he just checked, the scribbles were replaced by some little pictures that probably were meant to resemble words; _it sort of looks like the words that come on the boxes of medicine from Mr. Braginski _came to mind as he looked all over the book for even the slightest bit of Italian.

Ten minutes would pass and several shelves would be investigated before the quirky little man gave in to that mysterious thing in his head called his 'brain', which employed the further-mysterious 'logic' that his _fratello_ and Ludwig seemed to enjoy to use, and walked over to the librarian. He became fearful again because of the tanned man's stare seeming to drill a hole through what little confidence he possessed, but he soon overcame the look to ask him a question. "Excuse me, sir, but I need a book that's written in Italian."

Placated, the librarian gave a reproachful nod. "Contemporary or modern?"

"Che cosa?"

A scoff escaped the brown-bearded lips as he rolled his eyes. "Go up any one of the stairways until you reach the eleventh floor. It will be on the shelf labeled 'Italiano Moderno'." The man angled his head back to his book with little care for what his visitor did, instead wishing to be reabsorbed to his own select novel.

* * *

Just as the man said, there was a section made up entirely of books for Italians. Not only that, but it turned out that the books were already alphabetized according to their titles, since organizing by every single artist's name in every single aisle would be exhausting and time consuming. So, knowing what he really wanted to look for, Feliciano looked directly into the 'C' section. He was beginning to feel the prods of embarrassment from his conscience as he looked, knowing full well that he had spent most of the day looking anxiously to an increasingly humid and coarse world instead of staying at home like he always have. It was so rare for him to go out past the Bosphorus Highway, yet he was now past that point and beyond his previous wonders of what the outside of his green, little town was like. He was an Italian with the sands, and he was now on a mission.

At last, Feliciano had found the book; it was at the very end of the 'C' section, which just so happened to be where his patience and confidence were scheduled to end as well. The title of the book was peculiar within itself, yet he just knew that it was now the time to learn from it. With what little money he owned for himself he bought the book and began to dream of what was to come from his efforts. _Wait, no; I've gotta drive soon! I can't be dreaming while driving, that's just silly._ He gave the librarian a fond farewell and the hugest smile of gratitude he could give, and was on his way before a bone-chilling scowl was shot in his direction. Then again, the smile was still plastered on Feliciano's face as he entered the car, ignored his seat-belt, and revved the engines for the grueling ride back. It was still there.

* * *

Nighttime had just fallen over Europa as the Vargas' red sports-car pulled into the drive-way. Of course there was not a single breath of sea-water in the air despite their location right near the beach; Ludwig himself was stumped, even after he had gone to the very same library years ago to look up a book to answer this environmental paradox. It was a peculiar one at that, but it wasn't too much of a problem. After all, where else would a person go to get near the ocean but hear the sweetness of the grass fluttering slightly in a low-hanging wind, or to smell the deliciousness of tomato juice- _What tomato juice? _Feliciano stopped in his tracks as the still-fresh smell of that red beverage took over his nose when he walked into the front-door patio. It did not come from the door, nor did it come from the patio-fence or the small ferns that were habitually placed in front of their home. Rather, the scent seemed to find its origins from the patio's _furniture_ of all places; upon further examination by simply walking over to the clear glass-top of the small table Feliciano saw a very distinct liquid that was coloured a deep, hearty red. _Our glasses are very good at keeping humidity in, though; it must have been kept out for at least a whole day in the sunlight non-stop! _What a perplexing thought to mull over, so early in the night! Even in the darkness, the North Italian's fingers could feel the freshness of the splot, probably being without a glass for perhaps thirty minutes with only the chill of the night to keep it somewhat stable and new. With a little gaze to the chair closest to the splotch was on the table and then to where the chair looked straight at, a warm and fuzzy feeling began to form over him as he put the pieces together. _Grazie._

There was little changed within their home, everything being together actually _exactly_ as he had left it. It was as if not a single person was inside the house to move anything, save a glass and that pitcher of delicious juice they kept inside the refrigerator, for the entire duration of the day. Now is a time for sleep, not for mulling over commitment to such warm and fuzzy feelings. Feliciano groped his way through their hallways as carefully as he could, yet _still_ ended up in their bathroom. So, after quickly turning himself around to the other end of the house he finally reached the bedroom where he saw his brother sleeping ever so peacefully in an exhausted-looking position upon the bed; Lovino had just barely missed his shirt when he had unclothed for slumber oh so long ago, leaving him with one article of clothing upon his body as the blankets tried desperately to hide what else he had under his slightly muscular torso, right below his navel. So, taking extra-precautions, Feliciano undid all of his own clothing and placed them wherever in the dark they needed to be. He did not care, for now his body had suddenly failed to keep him steady after hours on end on the sun-burned road with the car's top all the way down. However, the landing was extremely nice and quite the fortunate mishap: he landed face-first onto the space right next to Lovino, with his face landing under his brother's left arm and his own left arm going over to meet Lovino's right. With a special whisper of hope to not awakening his brother when he opened his eyes for a quick second, the conscious Italian saw that his Southern brother still slept in harmony even with the new weight and warmth attached to him. _How lucky can I be?_ The brother rested his head upon Lovino's bare chest, wrapping his left arm onto his right shoulder by traveling upwards just a bit. Sure, it was going to be awkward to wake up like this, but in his final culmination of thought the North Italian added to his last ones with a single amendment: _It feels nice._


	10. Chapter 10

The week dragged on to its end, with the day of Feliciano's Fantastic Adventure being just on the dreary Tuesday. Lovino gave Feliciano just the smallest reprimand possible, but gave it his all to try and convince him that it did not bother him in the slightest. In truth, he did exactly as his brother had teased him about in the morning over breakfast: he threw a little fit when he saw his brother leaving, pulled up a chair onto the patio, and stayed there all day all the way until night-time.

_Well, he didn't _tease_ me, to say…_ Everything was an affront to the glorious person that is Lovino Vargas, even if it was meant in the most polite way. Feliciano's little jabs at humour were not entirely lost on his brother, but he still bit back like a shocked viper. To such an extreme was Lovino's distrusting mind that he could simply walk into someone on the street and he would instantly know that he will _hate_ them. It was nothing of the sort of actual distrust or anger, but it was simply because there was little chance that they would get along anyways. Most of the world was an utter shit-hole filled with shit-holeish people, and it was of no use to get to know them. The only exceptions to that pious rule of understanding were his brother, Feliciano, and his adopted father, Antonio. A small whisper of self-reprimand that had made itself at home for the past week of splendiferous emotional uproar came back, saying _Your brother's been a really big exception to The Rule, hasn't he?_

Lovino shook the thought out of focus, wanting to keep those memories strictly and utterly to the bed-room. Every time those little lingering doubts of his sanity bounced in like the little bastards they are, their demeanor caused him to blush. The bare facts that infected his brain were beginning to lose their sting and their 'taboo', in retrospect about how life has not changed in the real world around them. However, there was still the fact that it was un-fucking-_natural_ to do those things. _Freak of fucking nature, that's what I am. My mind is talking to me, and I think I can just walk this the fuck off like it was nothing. We sleep naked, _together_, no less!_ This resonating factual-belch broke in once every day, without fail, and it was utter horseshit in the guise of the clearest truth. _Liar, liar, liar, liar. You're a cock-fucking _FREAK_ who fucked his own brother like a mad-man, and now you're trying to get _USED_ to it instead of getting the fuck out!_

Without a doubt, his yell of "Shut the fuck up!" could've smashed the bathroom mirror in front of him had the air formed a nice, hard fist. Instead all it managed to do was send Feliciano running for their peach-coloured washing room with those big-ass saucers he called eyes, filled with unbridled concern. With a heavy sigh of embarrassment, he managed to remove his brother's hand from his unclothed back. In a suggestion to change the mood, Lovino looked towards the kitchen just down the hallway from whence Feliciano scurried, and he said "Hey, how's about I clean up the dishes? You've done that job enough for once month; it's _my_ turn, now."

But of course, being the Good Samaritan by heart and soul, Feliciano immediately joined his brother to do the job. He rolled up the sleeves of his light-blue shirt in contrast to his brother's bare and slightly muscled-torso, and they both began to clean up. The Southern Italian automatically assigned himself to the cooking usings, while the North Italian began to hog the eating-utensils and usings. They were gathered at the their fake-platinum sink, which sat upon the middle of their marble counter. Sun basked into the room like a welcome guest to a party, it being transmitted from that great ball in the sky over the ocean just barely half a mile outwards from their house. It was a flat, straight-way, with only half of that half-a-mile being actual solid ground and the rest being sand, thus allowing for a beautiful panorama of a clear-cut ocean that seemed to go on and on into the Unseeable Far-Away. This was all within persistence of no sound, bar the trickle of water and clanging of pans.

Their pressured silence was too much to bear. Feliciano looked at his solemn brother, whom did his half without a word. Now, Feliciano understood that everyone needed a little peace and quiet now and then; however, this has been a whole week of nothing but reading at home alone while Lovino went out to work. _I want to work, too, but fratello says that it's good for me to stay inside and read and meet our friends. 'I am the muscles, and you're our brains. Well, somewhat'. Oh, sometimes he makes me so unhappy!_

Just then, he remembered something important from the book: 'if they're starting to have trouble, then there's evidently a lack of fun between you both. If you fix that, then you will both feel better'. So, in a natural conclusion to make, Feliciano began to look for something fun to do, so that the awkwardness would thaw for once and that they'd be perfect, just like in the book. When he subconsciously dropped both of his hands in the sink, it came to him. Now, the man knew what he had to do: he stole a quick glance to his half-naked brother before acting upon not only written 'facts' from his new book, but also on a growing restlessness that felt insulted by the somberity Lovino always had.

"Lovino?" A small, chipper voice called from his right. When the South Italian turned to see what was the problem, he felt a finger suddenly poke his nose, and along with it came quite a lot of bubble-suds. _What in the world?_ he thought, looking into a mirror placed near the refrigerator. Feliciano put soap on him! What a silly look it was, there being a small white bubbly mountain on his face, Lovino turned to the perpetrator, seeing that his brother was just barely hiding a devilish smile as he was scrubbing a pan. _Is that so, eh?_ With a nice flick of his index finger, he launched his own share of the suds at Feliciano; it landed right on his ear, causing him to laugh in absolute hilarity.

In return, Feliciano swiped a few more menial attacks at his brother, whom did it right back, until it evolved from fingers and noses as the main weapons of battle until it became hands and arms firing the sink's soapy munitions back and forth. Sometimes their flicks miscalculated trajectories and caused collateral damage upon the floor below. At first, their attacks merely formed small hills near their feet, but as soon as they began to splash in full-on attempts to douse the other, a puddle was coming to life. But those two Italian brothers did not care about the puddle forming underneath their toes, for they were laughing in absolutely wonderment at their Splash-War.

Eventually, the war came to end. Both sides were dripping from head to toe. Feliciano's shirt was now a hue slightly darker than before, and soggy from all the water it absorbed. On the other hand, lovino's muscles gleamed from all the surprising amounts of water aimed at it, making the sun shine just as brightly as it would off the sea. Why, exactly, Feliciano would aim for such a poignant target when the head was worth far more points in battle? Oh well, no matter; they both won with big, childish grins on their faces. "That was amazing, fratello," he managed to gasp out between breaths and broken chuckles.. "Thanks a lot."

The investigator nodded his head as he used a towel to dry out that one curl that marked him as a Vargas brother. He tugged the towel through, dragging it on the curl, and it sproinged back to its original, bouncy position. Then, he answered. "No problem, Lovino; you were acting so down on yourself that it was making me feel a little down, too." He tilted his head to the right, looking away from the scene. "And also… you sort of made me upset when you said I was only good as the brains and just being the one who talks to our friends, while you actually go to work." A little sigh. "It seems as if you think I'm only good for those things."

"Really?" He could hardly believe what his brother was saying. Lovino tried to get him to look him in the eyes by leaning just over the sink to try and sneak on him. "I don't think that way, fratello! I just meant that you're better with people then I am, you knew that the day we met, right?"

This made him come around, a small smile on his face to show he remembers what he was talking about. "Yeah, you yelled a _lot_ at Francis and Ludwig."

Lovino nodded in confirmation. "They deserved it, Feliciano, no doubt about it. That was _our_ re-union, and even though they made it as great as we could've made it if we were up to it, it was still crap." By now, he knew he was off-track. "Anyways, fratello, the reason _I_work instead of you is because I'm used to it by now; I've been a jack-of-all-trades ever since we re-met, and I've worked all across town. Anything that keeps us a-float is more then enough. If keeping you around is what I get paid, then I'd gladly work until there's not a single thing left to do in this down." He lowered his head, mumbling the next words. "Also, I can't just let you go so easily. Who'd be able to protect you besides me?"

Despite his brother's mumbling, he could still hear what he had to say. With a blush, he whispered, "Well, you've always been a Signore Brontolone, fratello."

Instead of his usual, random outbursts, he gave his brother a wily smile. "Oh? So, I'm _grumpy_, you say?" Lovino lightly tapped him on the shoulder as a childish way to get back at him. Being that his brother is so impressionable, Feliciano returned the tap at his own level of strength; however, that strength was higher then that when Lovino dealt, because the North Italian was trying to deal the same way that Lovino did but had no idea that his brother was only dealing a small percent. So, not trying to understand why his brother was dealing that much more strength then he did, Lovino instead went up a knotch and nudged even harder then before; this practical-shove was so much that he sent his brother right onto his heels. That was all that was needed to lead the North Italian into a sudsy, watery slip. Feliciano let out a surprised yelp as the world went topsy-turvy upsy-daisy, and reached out for a saviour. The counter, one of their swirled cabinet knots, his brother, anything to protect himself from this sudden fall.

Lovino grabbed his brother's right arm with his left hand in a reflexive effort, all in all relying on some ingrained instinct to automatically assume the worst and to be on route to meet it. It was almost like a sixth sense, since he always was good at catching objects hurtled through the air, or simply keeping track of the fire-flies illuminating their porch in the hotter days of summer. Anyways, now both brothers were at an angle, with Feliciano at the most extreme of them while Lovino held up his brother's entire body with just that one hand latching on to keep him from obtaining a full one hundred-and-eighty degree on the floor. Feliciano turned his head ever so slightly to just see how close to the ground he was; just barely half a foot, nothing much that would cause any severe injury at this point.

However, the only brother that was standing had to hold onto the counter-top for support, trying his hardest to keep Feliciano from descending onto the floor-tiles below. _Hold, hold!_ his mind commanded, ushering all his strength to his finger-tops. This was something like life's direct challenge to his assertion that he would protect his brother. _God damnit, I _am_ a good brother, and I won't let him-_

Slip. Flop. Feliciano's wet arm slid right through Lovino's fingers, leading him to fall just barely a foot onto the floor. Although the valiant efforts of Lovino kept the North Italian from bearing the entire brunt of a full-slip-and-fall to the back of the head, it still managed to smart in its own way. The world blacked out for half a second before it all came back into focus; stars and all the other colour's flaring within his vision eventually disappearing. When he blinked his eyes twice, he saw─ and felt─ his brother practically on top of him, feeling the back of his head in concern and saying both curses and apologies at the same time.

Sigh. _I think I should follow a foot-note in the chapter; it said it's a last-resort, but I'm running out of 'happy options'. _Feliciano paused for a moment, trying to remember what exactly the book said. His momentary freeze somehow caused Lovino even more concern, to which he said he was going to try and find a bandage or some medication. Before he could so much as get up from his kneeling down to the floor, Feliciano grabbed his arm so that he wouldn't run off and do something silly, rash, or embarrassing. The irony was deliciously evident as he caught his brother's arm; usually he, Feliciano, was the one who needed to be restrained because of how impulsively overly-happy he could be. This feeling of sudden control felt new at one time and… familiar in the next. "Stop" he finally spoke, his smile as one of capricious yet patient warmth, and his voice cracking slightly from the surprise of such words coming into being from his mouth. "You've taken care of me ever since we met, fratello. I know how hard you work all across town, all to keep us together." The agitation faded away from him; it being replaced by gratitude. "You've made me the happiest fratello in the entire world, mio fratello. But now, it's my turn to make you happy."

"But-"

An index and middle finger stopped the shell-shocked Lovino from talking his way out of this. "No arguing, please." His hand slid from those lips, down the chin and up to Lovino's neck; his pulse was sky-rocketing, along with a not-too-subtle reddening of his cheeks. To tease him, Feliciano gave his brother a small kiss on the right cheek, pulling him in with his left hand on the nape of his neck. Feliciano had to keep his mouth closed as he pulled away, to avoid laughing at how Lovino's pulse practically skipped a beat. _He's feeling it now._ With a commanding whisper, the house-warming brother gave an order to his physically-dominant counter-part: "Go to bed and wait for me, all right?"

That hilarious pulse could have smacked Feliciano's fingers clear off of Lovino's neck if it had just a tad more strength then it did. His brother, almost in a daze, stumbled his way right out of the kitchen, towards their room. Once he was gone, the North Italian licked his lips─ half to recapture a special taste, half to un-chap his lips─ and he made his way to their mini-library.

* * *

If he put one of his hands upon his chest right now, Lovino could have sworn that his heart was making an attempt to escape from its bony confines. Honestly, he couldn't blame it; this situation turned from fearing over his brother's for-some-reason-not-actually-so life threatening bruise, into where Feliciano was kissing him, holding him, ordering him to bed…

_Oh God, does he actually __**want**__ to do that again?_ Lovino couldn't believe just what was going on. Perhaps that bonk to the head made him go mad? That must be the case; after all, why else would his brother act so weird?

Down a way's in their house, Lovino heard what he could describe as a sound Feliciano would make if her were being choked. It was a foreign, disgusting sound that had no place in being in the world; the sound provoked fear within him, which was an emotion he felt for the fourth time this day and was beginning to wear down its welcome. Oh, where has the time gone? With all his fears, Lovino had forgotten that he wanted to go to bed at – a quick glance at their bed-side clock – 12:18 P.M. Well, time flies when you're having a splash-fight; the day is late, and the night shall be born once more. Of course, he and his brother usually slept entirely in the nude because night-clothes are for the weak; however, these pair of work-jeans were just as good as being bare. Good night, world; good night, fratello, I am sorry I couldn't stay away for whatever the hell you were thinking of, but-

"Lovino."

_Crap._

The voice that beckoned to him was as smooth as silk, just like some sort of deviant or predator in some make-believe tale would have. It was biding its time by hiding within his fratello's voice-box, seeing this as the right time to reach out into the world to slither through Lovino's ears. When Lovino looked up, all he could see at first was the darkness of the room, which stemmed from the fact that the bedroom's very thick drapes blocked out the sun. The entire room would be shaded, lightly lit darkness if not for the nearly pious beacon of light from down the halls. Into the bedroom, this breaking light spread out into the dark abyss, reaching the feet of their make-shift giant bed. With all his might, Lovino tried to hide himself under the bed-sheets when he heard the slow, purposeful footfalls of bare feet in the hall. Only his lone, bouncy strand of hair, which differed from the rest of his bushel of brown hair stood above the sheets to see that colossal shadow blocking the hall light. It whispered again, "Lovino?", It's sultry tones dragging his name out in either mocking or desire. Quite frankly, the South Italian was not in a terrible hurry to find out.

One knock.

Two knocks.

_The door is open, you fool. Why're you looking for me?_ Lovino looked out to see what his ahoge saw; it was a sight to behold, indeed. There stood Feliciano, his right knuckle resting lazily after the second knock on the door frame. After all, he seemed to stand just like his knuckles: lazily, relaxed, propped against the wood. Even that loose shirt he wore was being supported by the white frame, with its left side scrunching up in a small bundle upon the door, and against his neck, and the right side being practically off his shoulder which allowed to show off his nice, smooth skin. It was his face that took the award home for the most distinguishing feature of Feliciano at this very moment. While immediately it looked like a droopy smirk, upon further examination it showed a shade of emboldened might, a smidge of secreted enthusiasm, and the one thing Lovino was sure he would never think was possible to be seen from such a neat, clean and energetic brother: lust. There was no hiding from it now, especially when Feliciano unstuck himself from the door and crawled upon the bed sheets once he reached them. Under them, Lovino's bare chest felt the weight of Feliciano as he mounted the bed. Soon, their eyes met in intense fault. Feliciano whispered once more, sitting upright on where Lovino's naval and hip-bones were. "Il mio fratello."

Slowly, Lovino lowered the covers from under his eyes to just at his collar. "C-" he stuttered, "Che?"

With the absence of the blanket, and bare hands remaining where they were when their lowering-blanket duties were completed, Feliciano declined himself so that they were facing each other eye-to-eye exposed chest-to-shirt'd chest. With this change of position came two creeping hands, which interlocked their fingers with Lovino's so that they would be pinned down and unable to move. Sure, Lovino was the more muscular of the two, but his muscles remained frozen in either fear or tense anticipation; he just couldn't move against Feliciano, even as he was lowering his head to be exactly to the right of his, their ears practically meeting. Out of Feliciano's lips came another purr; far different then before: then, he sounded unsure yet eager. Now, however, he was completely dominant. "I'm going to make you happy, and I won't let you stop me." He placed a soft kiss upon Lovino's shoulder, and dragged the blanket down as easily as he could. For every inch it lowered, Feliciano seemed to place a kiss or a lock upon a bit of Lovino's neck and right shoulder.

Eventually, their thick blanket was completely pulled away to bare Lovino to attack; his assailant quickly exploited this gift by rubbing all the way Lovino's naval to his shoulders with his hands. All the while, the South Italian writhed in growing waves of emotion as he felt every finger-tip rubbing, every soft, tender kiss landing. Down below, within his now-confining pants, there was indeed a very sincere response going on, that's for sure. Each finger-stroke from Feliciano's hands went further up his neck, while they went further and further down 'til they reached his pants. From all the commotion and residing ebbs of pleasure on the rest of his physical being, Lovino's mind failed to notice the feeling of Feliciano's fingers poking against him as they unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. Through fits of ecstasy, the messages his nerves sent from his lower-body just barely made it past massive oceans and humongous waves that were convulsing through his body. His mind was whiting out from this overwhelming attack of sensations until finally he just plain old _died_: Feliciano made it past his pants and accidentally touched him. Although the act of undressing him was nearly muted, the feeling that was shot throughout his entire body practically made his entire body shatter.

Feliciano's fingers felt the long, hard shaft that he had found by complete accident whilst digging in his brother's pants for buried treasures. And, by judging the arching of his body, there was a lot to gain from this venture into a region nether traveled in precise examination even by the hands of the person it belonged to. So, to experiment with how far this advance in power over his brother will go, he dragged the tips of his fingers upon these structure to see how the overall picture will react. Doctor-Professor Feliciano, as he would now be called within his mind after bringing all the elements of his little novels together to amuse himself while Lovino gave off over-pronounced reactions, observed that his brother's body became less tense─ almost melting, in fact─ when his fingers began to stroke. In response to this discovery, Doctor-Professor Feliciano began to field-test further his 'hi-pot-hesis', if he remembered the word correctly: if he kept doing this, only a bit faster, Lovino would keep on moaning.

Success! The patient continued to contrive and wrangle as the rate was increased, his moans becoming longer and his face redder then ever. It would be a considerable help to look on the inside of Lovino's mind, but at this point there is nothing going on in there except a sheer white blob of absolute pleasure. He may turn his head with grunting admission, he may be wriggling himself out of his jeans and kicking them off the bed, he may be seeing nothing within his eyes but the ceiling and beyond to the Higher Heavens, but there is still nothing he was thinking or saying. It simply is not possible for him as a being at this point.

But there was this lingering question hanging around Feliciano's mind as he approached his twentieth consecutive stroke; _What next? _The book had mentioned that doing this would prepare Lovino, but the next step would be particularly deviant. So, without warning or pretense, Feliciano placed the tip of his brother inside his mouth. Just the tip, of course; he didn't want to have a repeat of when he was preparing in the kitchen. The idea of actually placing part of his brother, especially _this_ part, inside of his mouth was one of the more inconceivable things in the world. Now it was reality beyond reality, feeling that heat within him in a way that seemed sort of familiar of barely a month ago. However, that memory was not from his mouth, that much was certain.

Lovino's mind absolutely annihilated itself at this point. There are not even cinders of fear or logic anymore; words are useless concepts that meant something in the past but now lacked their previous meanings. Nothingness defined.

Slowly and steadily did Feliciano bring his brother in. From the look of some of those special magazines Kiku owns, people could just take in whatever they wanted one-two-three; however, what those books didn't show or even mention was that if you tried to take it in all the way you would gag as if you were being punched in the throat. The book he bought warned him of this and even he knew that taking in such a large, bulging _thing_ would be tantamount to suicide, but he just had to try it for himself. He kept his hands firmly pressed against Lovino's legs now, being positioned just down below his waist and trying to figure out where exactly he was going with this. _Should I actually… ask him?_ Feliciano wondered nervously within the confines of his conscious, but seeing as how his brother could make an escape attempt if he did stop, this was almost certainly out of the question. To take a step back and think about what to do to him next, Feliciano quickly removed himself lips-full-on his brother.

Strangely enough, this seemed to make Lovino shudder in pleasure. His slightly-tanned, muscled and naked body wiggled just like when his brother touched him there, yet it was more concise to the moment instead of just being a random shudder. _That's it!_ He thought with giddy, and immediately brought it back in to its place within his mouth. Lovino continued to wiggle as the North Italian was bringing his head up and down in a small bobbing motion, each stroke being accompanied by his lips and by the very edges of his teeth along skin and primal fervor. Oh, there was definitely something _primal_ building within them as Feliciano kept going; thoughts of books and doctor-professors being created out of a childish need to play games suddenly evaporated into thin air and were replaced by an unquenchable need to go faster. _Faster,_ both minds said in unison, and so Feliciano sped up as he mouthed merely half of it.

"F-Fratello…" Lovino's voice trailed off in another groan as he began to feel around for something to grab with his left hand, merely meeting the lone swirled-hair that he and his brother shared. His hips began to try and meet the motions that were being done to him, making him twirl with ecstasy and unhinged sexual pleasure.

Finally, after what seemed to be ten minutes of sweat and heat, Lovino's truly greatest memory of their first time came back: the ending. Sure, the build-up was good and the pleasure was an inescapable drug that could be re-administered over and over with the mere stroke of a hand or a kiss of the lips or the ram of a hip, but the ending is what tops it all. Over and over again, the memory played as he began to feel that Great Finish becoming reality: his hips couldn't stop moving, his toes were clenching as he dug his heels into the bed, and finally his Little Lovino began to feel like it was going to let out the entire universe at once in an unending stream of beauty and passion.

And so it was remembered, and so it was. Feliciano had no idea what was coming because Lovino couldn't form any sort of warning. He let out his fear, his rage, and all that held him back from actually being in the present with the world. Feliciano was surprised by it at first, but when he realized what was happening he tried with all his might to pull him in further as a last hurrah; he didn't get far at all, and took in all of that stuff he could. In the end, Lovino completely splayed himself upon the bed as he tried to catch his breath, feeling that his entire being was simply rewritten into the fading wades of wonderment he once felt. Was this happiness?

Some of Lovino's release had dripped onto the bed when Feliciano realized he couldn't swallow it all at once and had to pull away. After swallowing what he could, the North Italian ignored these droplets as they caught themselves in his shirt when he pulled himself up as far as he could to just lay on Lovino. There was nothing left in the world to either of them except trying to find their places in the world; they felt that they were on the top of it, but perhaps there is nothing _to_ the world except that they were two panting men whom were about to lose themselves to sleep. In the end, couldn't that be the top of the world for them, instead of contrived unhappiness, restrained boundaries in the sand, and awkward silences in the place of kisses, hugs, and unrestrain? Oh, pity be upon the poor idiot who suffered through that all this time, if only he may learn from his free-spirited brother about what it means to truly be free. Primal tension had built a wall between the two, and now it was all but destroyed in blissful undermining; now where would they go?

Only the days ahead would tell, for now the term 'taboo' was taboo, and it was no longer a factour, but an annoyance that never crossed Lovino's mind again unless it were in the deepest mullings. And mull he did, for there were things left to do.


	11. Chapter 11

The sun seems to climb up from its galactic bed to wink its beginning lights upon Europa. From those well-built houses in the north that caught some of that inexplicable snow from beyond Ivan's factory to those beautiful beaches right off Mediterranean Lane. There seemed to be a steady climb for the sun today, which caused the black and blue night to retreat as streaks of pink and orange rose to take their place. With these streaks of light and sun came the rise of temperature in the air that lifted the dew off the grass into the air. In the night these molecules accumulated not only in anticipation of their final ascent to Heaven, but also for those precious seconds afforded to them by the still chill of the night before their beautiful deaths basked by the sun.

One other rose, but not in the sense of orbiting the planet. At this ungodly hour, Lovino Vargas stirred from the most peaceful sleep he had taken from as far as he could remember. Right now, he felt the release that ecstasy brought him, the soothing bliss still embracing him as was his brother whom hugged Lovino from behind his naked back. With strain in the dark he saw the slumber that Feliciano was enjoying since the events of last night, barely holding on once Lovino sat himself up on the bed. Eventually, his green eyes adjusted to the lack of ambient lighting besides that far-off solar glow in the distance to see just how his brother looked: his shirt was still on, barely masking his light frame as it breathed small snores that kept him within whatever mystical, far-out dream he was in. It must be a rather good dream, since he was actually smiling. _Smiling!_ Lovino's tired mind exclaimed as if in disbelief that anyone could be happy sleeping, even Feliciano.

Lovino felt a bit happy on the inside that his brother still could hang onto his conditionless grin even while being so deep in sleep in such a lewd position such as this; _at least he's happy, that's all I need._ But the feeling soon diminished as he began to realize that today was one of his workdays. Unlike Feliciano, he actually had a job to keep to make sure they kept this little abode for themselves. Oh, sure, this little vacation for the past week or so could be called so much worse than back-breaking labour out in town, but in its own perverted ways it was so much better. However, right now it was five forty-seven, his clock would chime for him in three minutes, and his jack-of-all trades' work would begin. Twelve hours of second-hand work all across Europa, looking to help anyone that would pay him to do his or her jobs. _What a pain in the ass._ Lovino moved his left hand through his bed-wrangled brown hair before staring at his digital clock.

Five forty-eight. So begin would his day, driving the family car down those lonely roads to look for a sign that would hail him in to fill for someone else. Someone who didn't know him, someone who doesn't care for him, someone who is too damn lazy to do their own work, someone's who's a fluttering French bastard named Francis Bonnefoy…

Five forty-nine. "Fuck it." Lovino muttered, and placed his hand on the clock to fiddle with its settings. Five fifty soon became nine thirty, so that today-on he would wake up right next to Feliciano, with Feliciano. As if to provide a valid excuse, he thought _What the hell, it's not as if I'll be missed_ and he lowed himself back into bed. With the gentleness of one handing precious china, Lovino took Feliciano's right hand and placed it right back where it was when he awoke; onto his bare hip.

Those three hours and thirty-five minutes of fresh sleep worked a wondrous spell over Lovino, whom woke only when Feliciano gave out a gigantic yet still petite yawn. The North Italian sat up weakly as he heard the chimes of their clock, giving that yawn while he stretched himself to work out any cricks in his body; however, he didn't seem alarmed at first to see Lovino still in their bed. Rather, a small smile broke over him before the realization of what day it was rolled into his naturally slow mind. That said, he quickly gave his brother a shake on his shoulders to summon him, "Fratello, fratello, please wake up!"

And so he did, his eyes lifting to let him see his brother had shaken him to be laying right on his back. Returning the smile he didn't know he got, Lovino said "Buon giorno."

"Fratello, you're late for work! It's a work-day today!"

If it had been Lovino in his brother's position, he would've completely flipped out with unquenchable rage to awaken him and drag him out of bed. However there was not rage to find but a wily smile full of amusement for this morning call. "Is it now?" He hardly seemed concerned with that fact; he was on top of the world, and no longer gave two-craps about those back on the earth below them. "I hadn't noticed; thanks for telling me." Then again, keeping their house is just as good as frankly confusing talk in bed. So while Feliciano went off to prepare breakfast quickly as possible and to check on the gas in the car, Lovino bathed and dressed himself at the speed of light.

Whatever food Feliciano made was delicious and crunchy, probably some kind of toasted bread or whatnot; the cook was not in the house since he was still checking on their car so that there wouldn't be any problem racing on towards the interior of the town. Personally, Lovino couldn't exactly know what it was since he instantly glommed it down the second his ass hit their wooden chair and got up in the next second to get out the door. One thing stopped him, and it wasn't a door or a wall or something he can scream and yell at: an open book, written in his and Feliciano's language. This was strange since it seemed to be old, ratty and out of place amongst their solidly up-to-date collection of cookbooks, fashion-novels and dictionaries. When he approached it with the caution of a caution of a thief, two things attracted his sight: the first was the pasta-laced blue, red, and white paper lying on the open page. Secondly was the cover of the book that he saw when he closed it, seeing not only the green-coloured cover-work, but also its gold-embroidered title:

Come una Moglie Bene Comportarsi; How a Good Wife Behaves.

* * *

A quick refuel of the car from their spare can in the garage guaranteed a safe trip for Lovino, and the food was good enough to get him out of the house; _It's a good thing, too; I think I should go take a bath._ Cleanliness was always a big point for Feliciano when it came down to it, even if he may get down in the dirt childishly playing around with any one of his friends if they come over. Strange it may seem to see a rather well-dressed Italian running around the beach with men his own age, or even _older_, but the joy of games and the inexplicable feeling of freedom that comes with water, sand, beach-toys and the cool caress of the ocean's wind that comes from oh so far away always out-weigh any consideration of silliness in their actions. Summer-time is practically year-round near their beach, if not for the coldest and more deranged of winter days that peek around the corner. Now that he thought about it, Feliciano began to think that Lovino would probably never make his way down towards the beach by his own free will because of how tired he is when he returns home, and how early he always needs to leave. _We have a house near such a pretty beach, but fratello can't even enjoy it? I think that's called 'ironing', or something like that._ The misplaced idea and misused wording of it faded away fast when he re-entered their house to see his brother backing out of their mini-library room. From Feliciano's point of view, his brother looked as if he had just stared into the eyes of a Holy Spirit, or the Devil himself: shock, awe, uncertainty of even being _alive_ painted all over him like a portrait on a wall. To jostle his brother, he said his name once.

To the first one Lovino did not give a response. It was the second call that surely stirred him, for his green eyes looked away at last from the room unseeable to Feliciano towards he who beckoned him. At first, Lovino's eyes still held those rattling stares that looked almost past him, onto a thousand-league journey over his shoulders. Lasting for just those prolonged seconds, Lovino's pause broke as he came back to reality from whatever frozen curse afflicted him at an instant-gradual speed that nearly gave both him and his brother whiplash. "All right, I finished breakfast and everything; is there anything you need while I'm out? I think Work told me that De Wit needs some help on the diluting station for his little farm, but can't do it by himself, so I'll be all over the place in case you need me to buy anything."

For a moment, Feliciano spaced out to think a thought as fast as he could, but could see no real object that he would need for the day. So, he passed out a warm smile and said simply, "Nope!"

A quick nod was all Lovino gave in return as his green-coloured eyes began to react to his emotions. They looked up and down at the un-showered and unkempt appearance of his smaller-physique'd brother, yet the feeling he was giving off told that he was seen an unmovable object before him that he couldn't pass or go around. He moved left and right to find a way around his center-of-the-hallway obstruction, but he always fell back into place in the end. His emotions took control of the wheel after having a surge of impulsive inspiration after reading the title of that foreign yet Italian-named book; that damned book, an intrusion on their lives that kept a hold on his brother so that he did what he did yesterday that dragged them from the afternoon into a night of euphoric bliss, and now made him stand like some sort, some sort…

_Nevermind._ The sooner he did what he could to make these imaginary walls of awkward staring come down, the sooner he could go out and do other people's menial work for them. With this in mind, he quickly took hold of Feliciano's left hand and brought his knuckles towards his lips in an effort to pass through a momentary gap in the wall of awkwardness. When Feliciano's eyes blinked in an unuttered mental stammer of disbelief by his brother's courteous peck, he was practically turned one hundred and eighty degrees because of Lovino's hurried rush; he had no time to see his brother's face morph from that naturally slightly-tanned colour into a deep, bountiful crimson.

* * *

At first, Lovino dreaded his return to work as he pulled into the Europa Mail Office to catch the first of his assignments' lists for the month. Lo and behold he was correct about the Dutchman; his accursed diluting station has once again backed up and broken down. De Wit arose from his bed that morning at his usual hours and began to do his morning routine when, all of a sudden, he heard a mechanic popping in the distance that practically shot the air clean of all sounds. In fact, Timothy said, "Everybody from two-ways down the road heard it, it's true: my sister Laura heard it, Francis heard it, even that old Ludwig all the way over heard it. If you want to, you could probably ask Mist'r Kirkland if he heard anything, I don't think he's out to work yet."

Lovino to all his effort respectively declined the mellow-yet-active suggested inquiry to Europa's finest- and only- police officer-constable. Instead, he tried to keep his new temporary boss on track so he could just move on to the next problem on the list. To this end he cajoled Timothy to lead him directly to the machine, watching where he stepped as he casually led him along so that he didn't accidentally stomp on one of the moistened little crops in the fenced backyard. From the look of the yard itself, it seemed pretty reserved: there was a pond that was, obviously, shared between the Dutchman himself, his Belgian sister right over the fence, and even with Francis the Frenchman, whom despite all his dastardly and frankly perverted mannerisms and flares, actually seemed to own a huge amount of land through fair and legal ownership; there were six different lines of equally-sized gardens that were seemingly plotted there parallel to each other, and perpendicular top the very pond that fed them life (albeit diverted through a master filter which kept all the unwanted minerals and such out). Each garden contained an admittedly beautiful flower, all leading the line of various other plants of fruits and vegetables on their non-existent march onto land from their murky source. Briefly this flora-bravado captivated Lovino, whom swore for a second that the tulip's orange-coloured petals would keep him staring forever if it weren't for the continued accented rattling of Timothy de Wit.

"Do you see, here?" He was four or so metres in front of Lovino, having reached the machine in the water by now by simply rolling up his pants-legs and crouching down in the ankle-deep green and brown. "I think it's the darn'd plug or something, we can never get it to work the right way. 'f course, my sister thinks that there might be something stuck inside of it, but I can't think of anything that could break it, at least not in the lake."

With a conservative jolt of surprise, Lovino snapped back into reality just in time to hear at least half of the explanation; in the end it really did not matter about what Timothy, Laura Roos**,** or even what he himself thought what the problem really was. Instead, the actual work itself would prove the culprit. The Southern Italian rolled up the sleeves and pants' legs of his Europa-marked jumpsuit that covered him with dark blue top-to-bottom, with the exception of a yellow star on a breast pocket, and made his way into the quite bluntly murky water. He was practically on top of the machine itself before he felt his foot sink further into the mud-bed, causing him to keel over a tiny bit with a yelp of surprise, and followed up with a profane exasperation. At first he tried to keep his charge where he was, assuring him that he could extrapolate his foot from the muck below, but he was quickly rescued from the mineral foot-trap by a large, strong helping hand of Timothy, which quickly pulled Lovino's meek by comparison leg from the deep. To the man who helped this seemed like a rather constant routine for him, saying, "Ah, don't worry about it; I keep getting stuck right around there, I swear it might be a pot-hole under water or something." However, this reaction was not shared by the Helping Man who came to this man's house to help him; it was one of amazement by the strength his companion possessed, which practically threatened to uproot his leg from its socket in a mere twist of the arm if it had wished to. A quick nod of thanks sufficed for him and for Timothy as gratitude, and so he began to examine the filter as best as he could. From the outside the clunky, white machine seemed to be in working order and perfect in shape, not a screw loose or a wire unplugged or damaged or even anything visibly blocking the inside. He steadily determined that they should open the outer case up so that they could see the mechanics on the inside, if only a last-ditch effort before advising a new purchase.

Sixteen bolts and four screws were taken off the shell thanks to the brown-leathered satchel around Lovino's waist, thus allowing for the frame to jiggle off and clang a little. To the Southern Italian's humiliation, he could not free the case by himself, only give it a little jolt and so forth. With a humble glance to Timothy, he seemed to plead for help to get the confounded thing off the concrete base, to which the man readily agreed. However, when the man bent down to help, Lovino could only mutter, "Please, don't try and help; it's my job, and I'll get it done." Surprised by the rather obtuse request, Timothy backed off to see where the brown-haired grunting workman was going with his constant readjustment of feet in the shore and on the concrete base itself to get leverage, all to no avail. After about two minutes of continued struggling Lovino acquiesced to his own blind determination to work on alone and gave another silent plea for help. Together, or rather again by the visibly stronger arms of the Dutchman alone and direction by Lovino's smaller hands they got the entire thing off to see a clean mess of wire circuits, a bulging filtration system, and some various tubes that neither of them knew what they did. It took not even ten minutes to find out that the problem was a loosened wire had snapped all around the case like an enraged rattlesnake's tail, thus providing the racket that happened earlier. During the entire process, Lovino's subconscious continued to contemplate and piece together a mental conclusion that he didn't ask for based on all that has happened in the last week or so, especially with his newly found weakness in strength when compared to this man who did nothing beyond Lovino's knowledge except sit at his house and tend to his garden. It was hard to fight off the deepening grimaces as he remembered how weak he became when his brother whispered whatever it was those nights ago, the swirling world and maddening statements he made when it seemed that he was close to collapse like a drunkard even though his lips had not met a drop of alcohol that night. And, in the end, he felt his stomach churn at the thoughts of how he and his brother had reacted with each other, starting first with that voracious rape of the standards of decency, and later the continued saga of social ackwardness that eventually led to his brother, too, being corrupted by this madness that swelled within Lovino. Was it pride, anger, or weakness that led to their forbidden dances and glances? Every time his mind returned to the word 'weakness' or any image associated with it, taboo or not, Lovino felt as if he was going to die of sheer embarrassment if only to escape the rest of his moral sins.

Throughout his childhood, he had tried to boss his adopted father around like a sort of mythical thug, but merely met a friendly rub on the head or a mirthful laughter of delight at such puzzling assertions; then, years later, he finally met the brother that was separated from him so long ago, and whom was now living with him under one roof. Of course, Feliciano Vargas turned out to be a rather whimpering man, more like a playful boy, whom looked towards books of learning and continued visits with friends both close and acquaintance'd; this seemed to provided Lovino with the opportunity to finally have someone beneath his gaze, to act like the other part of the leader-subordinate relationship that would make him the highlight of his completely imaginary Italian Black Market Underworld. Instead the two came quickly and calmly to a conclusion that there was an order to things, as stated before, and that now there only remained the work and the time between all things left considered and unconsidered, in their already explained system. That was the problem, though: _he's too _much_ like a subordinate_. Feliciano gave little yelps of fear to the thunder that crashed outside that sent him leaping into bed, pleading for Lovino to hold him and make the Bianco Malo go away; he'd be forgetful half the time and leave whatever shirt or pants he was wearing at the time back inside the house, and go outside wearing either one or the other, or even on occasions that made Francis giggle or Lovino himself groan in humility, both. There was something that occurred to him, despite everything that spoke to the contrary, every mark against the very idea that it would be true, despite the fact that Lovino was the theoretical bread-winner and head of the house and Feliciano was the subordinate and the house-maker, Lovino had to admit that Feliciano was the mental superior. Shocking as it may sound, it was true: Feliciano may _seem_ to only laze around most of the time, the very fact alone that he decided to read, to go to so far lengths as to teach himself every single cooking-recipe he could or read up on such an array of topics that baffled Lovino's mind proved that Feliciano was mentally superior to the both of them. Every mechanical thing around the house was brought in from _Feliciano's_ side of the arrangement of the new house, from the refrigerator to the clock, while everything cultural came from Lovino's side, be it the wooden chairs or the patio out in the back of their house that overlooked the beach. It was almost like breathing for both of them, for Feliciano actually sometimes simply stood up in mid-sentence to tinker with something important in the garage with the concentration of a statue only to come back and trip over his own foot, and Lovino could craft a strong wooden chair but find the light-switch for a room to be an uncontrollable abomination. It wasn't so much genius, as it was what they could do if they had the mind to do it, but these only lasted for brief moments; they had too much to do, really. But now that Lovino had gazed longingly at the flowers and let these factoids and random moments of their personal experiences flow and flow around his mind like a balanced centrifuge, concocting a simplistic solution: he was in this sump water right now, dressed in this jump-suit right now, and he since childhood 'til now considered himself the boss, and was so stressed by his loss of control over his own life because he was the stronger one of the family. From the very beginning of their home-life together, Lovino realized now, there was a sort of 'thing' between them that seemed to separate them naturally into their life-styles; he could not recall what the exact word for it was, especially while he was leafing through the different wires in front of him, but it was definitely something real. His physical strength meant he was the one who would go out to every asshole's yard and see what their problem was, his strength gave him the obligation to memorize every single little manual that he could, and his strength placed him in the water now, trapped within his mind a mere twig in a gigantic wind-storm of mulling thoughts. It was within those ten minutes that one thing became evident, whispering it in the end as he stood up from the water and nodded for Timothy to place the casing back down in finality: _If I'm too weak now to save mio fratello from hurting himself, or even pick up a damned filtrator case, then how in the hell can I even try and pretend that I'm doing my part?_

And away the storm went, its gusts dissipating back to their respective corners within the confines of Lovino's troubled mind, the complicated words being the only way to describe their attached connotations as this ramble rumbled away from him, as if it was pleased that some unknown point had been made. The loud bang made by the placing-down of the case was capitalized by a little ripple pass through the water from the square concrete base, seeming to keep strength until it died before reaching the parallel strips of garden. Some smaller ones attempted a similar escape from the concrete base, but met the same fate as they faded away into their murky oblivion. So, hitherforth, Lovino shook his head to try and drag himself back _again_ to reality if only to remain on-task and to get out of this pond before he turned a hundred years old.

He and Timothy replaced the case in a split second, and all of the other various details of re-attaching parts and getting out of the water to dry off were little more than brief discrepancies. Both of them got out of the water and proceeded to dry themselves off as quickly as possible, the grimy feel of mud and others still clung to their feet while they walked for Lovino's car. The South Italian kept his gaze towards the little stones that formed the path as his Dutch client rifled through his wallet for some of the flimsy, miniscule, plastic money in his wallet. By now the sun had fully risen to its nominal height of the day, and its rays casted themselves all over the countryside. When it was all said and done, Lovino found himself sitting in his car with forty-five fresh Euro's in his hand. From the point of view from the receiver these nine cards seemed to be little more than placeholders for currency, credit or debit cards of unimaginable than _actual money_; it was diminutive and flimsy, providing the meagerest impression of wealth. To give him credit, Lovino was trying his hardest to remain in the 'now', rather than falling back into the obtuse, fogged place within his mind that still lingered from his deplorable, pitiful, frightening, rectifiable musings and contemplations. Yet he could not restrain himself from blurting out, "How'd you get so strong?"

Timothy blinked, his eyes retracting from its usually normal neutral-yet-distant demeanour that set in whenever he had nothing else to say, and balked in hesitation as to how to respond properly. "Pardon?"

Lovino nearly slammed his hands against the steering wheel in a desperate need to release the sudden jolt of awkward energy that began to swirl around once more, only now it was with an actual living _person!_ Instead, he directed the imagined power out through his feet into the bottom of the car with the most clandestine strike as he began his explanation, and a puff of breath that restricted itself to the innards of his mouth, causing his cheeks to puff out for nay a second, causing him to look similar to a squirrel with a humongous problem. "I- It's nothing. I mean- really, I want to know, how'd you get to be…" and his voice trailed as he pointed his right hand towards the Dutchman's arms. "How in the world did you get to be so strong? You've only a few plants here, and they were barely bigger than a god-damn little pot when you placed them in the ground!" Lovino would know; Timothy called him in from the Europa Volunteer Service to help install these very mini-levies that filtered and monitored the water in the Dutch garden.

One would assume that such a ham-fisted approach to the question would dissuade the other to answering at all; however, in a way that surprised the man himself, Timothy's facial expression of subtle critical wariness wore away towards a genuine expression of thought. Each time Timothy seemed to reach the verge of having an answer for Lovino, the thought got loose of its leash and ran away again. First, a stutter breached his lips with "Uh" and "Ah", until he could finally form cohesive words that made a sentence. "I'm sorry, but I don't really remember." He wanted to leave it there and then and simply see the man on his way as soon as possible, but something inside the Dutchman, past all of the silence within him, was encouraging him to speak more. "However, I believe that there's a place where you can get a little stronger; it's called a 'gym', I think, and it's a little bit east of Adriatic Pond."

_Fuck._ Lovino's mind hissed. _That's Roderich's territory._ He wanted to plant his head through the steering-wheel to compound his agitation, but instead chose to give a nod and a clear-coated answer, "Thank you," he turned on the engine and let his attention dissipate as it normally did these days; it left his voice with little more emotion than simply reciting a timeworn expression. "If you need any more help, please don't hesitate to call the number on the card, I'll be over as soon as possible to lend a hand. I will be out for the entire day, so please don't worry if I don't respond, everyone else needs help just like you." Finally, the engine flared to life as Lovino kept his eyes on the road in front of him. "Have a nice day."

Timothy tried to watch that red car rocket off into the distance, speeding along the pavement with all the ease of a caressing hand on silky skin, but he couldn't; something was preventing him from doing it. The world became round and elongated as water came to his eyes, and when he brought his left hand up to see what was happening, he heard his sister call from her house just one way's over.

"Timothy? Timothy!" she beckoned, "What happened?"

He did not respond, he still looked only at his hand.

This worried the light-brown-haired woman, whom then cautiously exited her house and walked over to the rickety fence that separated their properties. "Are you okay, Timothy? What's wrong?"

At last, after what seemed an eternity of gazing at what he had found with a swipe of his index finger, he turned from the tears that had spontaneously rolled down from his eyes to his cheeks. The only thing that he seemed capable of saying, the only thing that could come to his mind except a blank gasp of air was "I don't know."

* * *

His watch beeped at twelve; time for lunch. The Croat gave him a similar wad of plastic cards, intending for it to be payment for Lovino's pan-staking work. Every work day passed, and he would have to bring all of the money to his locker out at the garage that he called his workplace. With that chime, he quickly hopped into his car and sped off to that dismal, wide-open area between Ludwig's house and the Frenchies' flower store, both of which were right around the corner to the town-hall. To any passing observer, Lovino's bright-red, high-end car looked out-of-place at this small, concrete square simply sitting out on the side of the road. One time or another, he had tried to maintain a somewhat decent workplace, but eventually his work kept him out far more then when he was actually in, so the place turned into a run-down storage locker for all the tools and manuals he could need.

If you were to walk in with him, you could have sworn that Lovino was creating the winning-entry for a 'Shabbiest Place in the World' competition; the smell of oil, hot-glue and industrial mini-equipment lingered like death over a fresh slaughter. By now, he was sued to it; he knew where every tool was, even if they were vacant from their designated boxes and cabinets. There's something Antonio had told him at one point when he had stopped by to have some clock or radio fixed (like any good father, he joked that he'd like to have a discount. But, still, he paid full price like a true man would). Just as he was leaving, Antonio left another one of his Spanish-laded proverbs: "Nothing's missing as long as you know where it is".

Lovino placed all of the money he earned into a small, locked and secured box that jutted out from the wall. At the end of his work-day, some of those cards would be left for him to take home as a salary. Some; barely a fraction. He had no clue where it all went, nor did he seem inclined to know at all; as long as he was paid at least some money by the end of it. The box closed with its usual clang, Lovino having turned away from it to wander two steps towards the backroom. This pathetic office-space was where he littered his necessary manuals, so that he would be able to find them instead of having to shuffle through tools or having to read each spine for the books he needed. Who in the world couldn't memorize a bilingual subsection-twelve air conditioner-filter manual's cover? _Idiots, that's who._ The more he stood there in this green-and-baige shack of hollowed-out purpose, the more that he had time to think to himself: _I've got a half-an'-hour to kill_. Thomas' parting advice rang again, beckoning him to his next rash decision to blossom. _I'm not hungry, and he said that the gym's open all day…_ Lunchtime is technically for lunchtime, but there's nothing in his employee handbook that says he couldn't go out for just a little exercise. Professionally, he wanted to tidy up this damn place so he could walk through without feeling a wrench underfoot. Instinctively, he wanted to lift mountains of steel to the ceiling or whatever the hell it takes to be strong. Instinct is far more powerful to beings like Lovino: they are driven by Instinct's bed-mate, Emotion, which always had a shotgun-seat for Instinct to hop in and fool around with unsuspecting peoples (especially if they're a South Italian twin). Now he could feel the pressures moving in on him again, encircling his mind as they had done back in the restaurant. They had broken free then, and were having rough-shot over him since; now, they were diving down again for another swipe at his conscience. It _hurt_ him: it enticed him to rub his arms to feel and massage a pain that was not here, to assuage a phantom that haunted him in his mind. But are they real, these two interlopers? One thing was for certain, especially as Lovino jumped into his car in such a way that you might say he was jumping into a life-boat off of a sinking ship:

Lovino never really liked his job, anyways.


End file.
